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LITERARY MEMOIRS OF 
THE NINETEENTH 

CENTURY 



BY 



GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 



» 



NEW YORK 

HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 
1921 






COPYRIGHT, I 9 2 I , BY 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. 



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APR 30 192! 



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NOTE 

I recall old Professor Child urging on me in my col- 
lege days "writing for bread," and saying I should 
remember "not all is for immortality, — in literature 
there are things that are meant to die, just as there 
are beasts and birds in nature," — words that often re- 
curred to me while compiling this volume. It is a 
selection from a mass of contributions to the old Nation 
and the old Atlantic of my early years, like my first book 
of criticism (1890); and, to quote the preface of 
that volume (what is also true of the other reprints of 
this edition), the papers are given with "little more re- 
vision than was necessary to cover unimportant omissions, 
or to combine, in one or two instances, kindred articles." 
These papers, however, though "very young" in one 
sense, and "very old" in another, fairly illustrate the 
working of what is coming to be called the "old, literary 
education" in the life of a young writer in my day; and, 
besides, I hope they may be welcome to the lighter, but 
still serious-minded hours of students in colleges, and to 
teachers of literature, as a view of literary affairs in the 
nineteenth century, though desultory, yet not often to 
be found in such variety and compactness, nor easily to 
be come at. And I am satisfied that my old editors, 
Wendell Phillips Garrison and Thomas Bailey Aldrich — 
and kinder and more loyal editors no young writer ever 
had — would be pleased at this late gleaning from the 
long-abandoned spring wheat-field. 

G. E. W. 

Beverly, October 8, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

Remarks on Shelley, 3 

Sir George Beaumont, Coleridge, and Wordsworth, 31 

Thomas Poole and his Friends, 45 

The De Quincey Family, 57 

Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, 67 

The Correspondence of Sir Henry Taylor, 75 

Hay ward's Correspondence, 91 

Thackeray's Letters, 101 

Darwin's Life, 107 

Dobell's Life and Letters, 121 

William Barnes, the Dorsetshire Poet, 127 

Mr. Ruskin's Early Years, 135 

Carlyle and his Friends, 145 

Edward Fitzgerald, 189 

Hawthorne, 201 

Longfellow, 215 

Motley's Correspondence, 227 

Bayard Taylor, 239 

A Shakespearean Scholar, 249 

Colonial Books, 263 

Charles Brockden Brown, 275 

Lucy Larcom, 283 

On the Death of Holmes, 297 

Lowell's Addresses, 303 



LITERARY MEMOIRS 

OF THE 

NINETEENTH CENTURY 






REMARKS ON SHELLEY 

I. HIS CAREER 

The natural charm by which Shelley fascinated his 
familiar friends lives after him, and has gathered about 
him for his defense a group of men whose affection for 
him seems no whit lessened because they never knew 
him face to face. The one common characteristic promi- 
nent in all who have written of him with sympathy, how- 
ever meager or valuable their individual contributions 
of praise, criticism, or information, is this sentiment of 
direct, intimate, intense personal loyalty which he has 
inspired in them to a degree rare, if not unparalleled, in 
literary annals. Under the impulse of this strong love, 
they have championed his cause, until his fame, over- 
shadowed in his own generation by the vigorous worldli- 
ness of Byron, and slightly esteemed by nearly all of his 
craft, has grown world-wide. With the enthusiasts, 
however, who have aided in bringing about this result, 
admiration for Shelley's work is a secondary thing; its 
virtue is blended with and transfused into the nature of 
Shelley himself, who is the center of their worship. To 
reveal the fineness and luster of his character, his essen- 
tial worth throughout that romantic and darkened career 
of thirty years, is their chief pleasure, and in this, too, 
they have now won some success, and have partially re- 
versed the popular estimate of the poet as merely an 
immoral atheist; yet, although some amends have been 



4 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

made for harsh contemporary criticism, Shelley's name 
is still for orthodoxy a shibboleth of pious terror and 
of insult to God. It is still too early to decide whether 
the modification of the harsh criticism once almost uni- 
versally bestowed upon Shelley will go on permanently, 
or whether it is not in some measure due to peculiar 
results of culture in our own time. Without attempting 
to prejudice this question, especially in regard to poetic 
fame, there seems to be, as the cause passes out of the 
hands of those who knew Shelley personally into the guar- 
dianship of the new generation, a tendency toward greater 
unity of judgment in regard to the larger phases of his 
character and conduct. 

Shelley, as Swinburne said of William Blake, was 
born into the church of rebels; he was born, also, gentle, 
loving, and fearless. The dangers to which such a natu- 
ral endowment would inevitably expose him were aggra- 
vated by a misguided education, and by the temper of 
that feverish and ill-regulated age in which modern re- 
form began. He was in early years first of all a revolter; 
he would do only what seemed to him best, and in the 
way which seemed to him best; he took nothing upon 
authority, he acknowledged no validity in the customs 
and beliefs which past experience had bequeathed to men ; 
he must examine every conclusion anew, and accept or 
reject it by the light of his own limited thought and 
observation; he carried the Protestant spirit to its ulti- 
mate extreme — all legal and intellectual results em- 
bodied in institutions or in accepted beliefs must show 
cause to him why they should exist. He was, moreover, 
in haste; he could not rest in a doubt, he could not sus- 
pend his judgment, he could not wait for fuller knowledge. 
Finding only incomplete or incompetent answers to his 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 5 

questioning, he leaped to the conclusion that there was 
no answer. Had he been contented with allowing 
this spirit to influence only his private creed and con- 
duct, mischief enough was sure to be wrought for him, 
error and suffering were in store for him in no common 
degree. But he was not merely building an ideal of life 
and formulating a rule of living for himself; he had, 
as he afterward confessed, a passion for reforming the 
world. He was early in print, and aspired to teach the 
world before he was well out of his teens — took in his 
hands, indeed, the regeneration of Ireland through pam- 
phlets, and public eloquence, and personal agitation and 
supervision. It is easy to dismiss this as the foolish con- 
ceit of a boy of talent much given to dreaming. It 
is easy, too, to dismiss his exile from his home and his 
expulsion from Oxford as childish obstinacy, disobedience, 
ingratitude, and presumption; but if there was anything 
of these faults in him there was also much more made 
evident in these first trials of his character: there was the 
capacity for sacrifice, the resolution to be faithful to the 
truth as he saw it. The beginning of manhood found 
him in the full sway of immature conviction, and already 
suffering the penalty. It is not necessary to follow out 
in detail the development of a life so entered upon. 
It led him to attack Christianity and to disregard the law 
of marriage, and this is the sum and substance of his 
offense. Yet no sign, perhaps, is so indicative of the 
increased liberality of religion in our time as the attempt 
which has been made to show that Shelley was essentially 
Christian, an attempt so common and vigorous that Tre- 
lawney felt called upon to protest against it. In this 
spirit Mr. Symonds writes from one extreme: "It is cer- 
tain that as Christianity passes beyond its medieval phase, 



6 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

and casts aside the husk of outworn dogmas, it will more 
and more approximate to Shelley's exposition. Here, and 
here only, is a vital faith adapted to the conditions of 
modern thought, indestructible because essential, and 
fitted to unite instead of separating minds of divers 
quality"; and Rev. F. W. Robertson, from the other 
extreme writes: "I cannot help feeling that there was a 
spirit in poor Shelley's mind which might have assimi- 
lated with the spirit of his Redeemer — nay, which I will 
dare to say was kindred with that spirit, if only his Re- 
deemer had been differently imaged to him. ... I will 
not say that a man who by his opposition to God means 
opposition to a demon, to whom the name of God in his 
mind is appended, is an enemy of God ; . . . change the 
name and I will bid that character defiance with you!" 
A candid examination must show, however, that Tre- 
lawney is right; there is no doubt that Shelley rejected 
altogether what is properly known as Christianity, in 
youth violently and with hatred, while in later years 
he came to care less about it. At the same time it 
is to be remembered that he had seen Christianity only 
in those forms whose most prominent characteristic is 
defect in charity and love, which Shelley believed to be 
the central virtues. Probably he never dissociated the 
Christian God from the Jewish Jehovah, and his feeling 
towards him is well illustrated in the terrible indictment 
he makes against him in reference to Milton's delineation 
of Satan as one "who, in the cold security of undoubted 
triumph, inflicts upon his fallen enemy the most horrible 
punishment, not from any mistaken hope of thereby re- 
forming him, but with the avowed purpose of exasperat- 
ing him to deserve new torments." It is, therefore, 
impossible to deny Shelley's atheism; the most that can 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 7 

be contended for is that in natural piety, in purity of 
life and motive, in conscientious and unselfish action, 
Shelley was exceptionally conspicuous. 

It is here that the second charge against Shelley has 
its place. How, it is indignantly asked, was he unselfish, 
loving, and conscientious, when he left his youthful wife 
to circumstances which resulted in her suicide, and trans- 
ferred his devotion to another? Nothing more can be 
done than to point out the fact that Shelley acted in 
harmony with his convictions of social duty; that the 
first marriage was the result of knight-errantry rather 
than affection, and had become destitute of any pleasure; 
that Shelley did not desert his wife in such a way as to 
make her suicide chargeable to him. These considera- 
tions do not, it is true, relieve him of condemnation, or 
remove the really great defect in his moral perception 
of the responsibility which rested upon him in conse- 
quence of a thoughtless and foolish marriage. Yet it 
is not doubtful that in his life he atoned for his error, if 
suffering is atonement; from that time a shadow fell 
upon him which never was removed. It is hard to find 
heart for reproach when one, whose whole gospel was love, 
is so cruelly entangled in the unforeseen consequences 
of his acts that he seems to have wrought the work of 
hatred. 

What, then, under this presentation of the case, re- 
mains to be said for that ideal character which those who 
love Shelley believe to have been his possession? That, 
beginning life with a theory which left every desire and 
impulse free course, which imposed no restrictions except 
those of his own honor and self-respect, which acknowl- 
edged no command not proceeding from his own reason, 
he yet served the truth he saw with entire loyalty and 



8 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

sincerity of heart; that, making many errors throughout 
a darkened life, he did not strive by lightness of heart 
or logical sophistication to avoid their penalties of misery 
and remorse, but kept them in memory and bore his 
burden of sorrow courageously; that by intense thought 
and bitter experience he came at last to find the laws 
of life and to obey them. He found how impossible it 
is for the individual to solve the problems put before 
him, so that he himself grew content to leave many of 
these in doubt; found how ignorant it was in him to 
make his own experience the measure of the conditions 
of general human life, and attempt to reform the world's 
motives and standards by reference to that experience 
alone; found how little the individual counts for in life, 
so that the youth, who with fervid hope took up the 
regeneration of a whole nation in confidence, came to 
doubt whether it was worth while for him to write at all, 
and rated himself far below his friend Byron. These char- 
acteristics are the evidence of his strength, sincerity, and 
Tightness of purpose; and through these he worked out 
an ideal of life and rule of living, which differed much 
from those of his early days. No ideal intrinsically more 
powerful in influence or more exalted in virtue has been 
worked out by men who, like himself, found the old 
familiar standards rationally inadequate and morally 
weak. These are the essential elements in Shelley's 
career, and to them his personal qualities and his daily 
life give form and color. This, too, is the work of a man 
framed for self-destruction, against whom circumstances 
did their worst throughout. The marvel is, not that his 
life was so broken in private happiness, and his public 
work so unequal in the worth of its results, but, taking all 
into account, that he saved so much of his life and 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 9 

work through his perception of the valuable objects of 
living, and his clinging to them. 

This, too, was the result of the imperfect years of 
preparation. He had given him only the traditional 
thirty years which belong to every genius for trial and 
training before the finished work can be required. He 
had just recognized the conditions to which he must 
conform, and was only ready to begin when he died. 



II. HIS ACQUAINTANCES. 

It is impossible to condense Shelley's Life in a clear 
way. One turns the pages, and owns for the thousandth 
time the fascination of Shelley, from the first glimpse of 
the boy, pressing his face against the window-pane to 
kiss his sister, to the hot July afternoon when he made his 
last embarkation, and the summer storm swept the gleam- 
ing mountains from his sight; but no art transmits the 
spell, and the story, clasped between these periods, must 
be left in its integrity. Shelley lived in solitude, and died 
before he was thirty years old; but his career involved 
such variety of scenes, persons, and incidents, was so 
thick-strewn with interesting episodes, and contained so 
many perplexed passages, that it is a study by itself, and 
requires for its mastery an acquaintance with an extensive 
literature of its own. It were useless to attempt a criti- 
cism, or to describe Shelley anew, but some unstudied re- 
marks upon his fortunes in life may be ventured upon. 

Must one incur the charge of being supercilious and 
aristocratic if he acknowledges at once a feeling, after 
reading Shelley's life, of having been in very disagreeable 
company? Assuredly no one can rise from the perusal 



io LITERARY MEMOIRS 

with a heightened respect for human nature, apart from 
Shelley. He was born a gentleman; his innate courtesy 
clothes him with attractiveness, and distinguishes him 
among his associates as a person of a different kind from 
them, in his actions and bearing; and the deference which 
Byron showed to him, it is not unlikely, sprang from a 
perception of this strain of breeding in him rather than 
from appreciation of his genius or his nature. In his 
earliest fellowship with school-friends, for whom he had 
a kindly regard at Eton and after they went down to- 
gether to Oxford, though Hogg plainly obscures it, there 
is a gleam here and there of natural and equal com- 
panionship; but this morning ray soon dies out. He 
was, afterwards, almost uniformly unfortunate in his 
acquaintances. His life was truly one long and sorrow- 
ful disillusion; and in it not the least part was the dis- 
covery of how he had been deceived in his judgment of 
persons. 

Hogg was his first example. Shelley became familiar 
with him at Oxford, and, not content with having 
him for a bosom friend, wished to make him his 
brother-in-law. At that time Shelley was in the first 
crude ferment of his intellectual life, eagerly absorbing 
the new knowledge which came to him from his indis- 
criminate reading, and disputing on all the usual topics 
with vehement and unwearied earnestness, insatiable curi- 
osity, and the delight of a youth who has just made the 
discovery that he has a mind of his own. His thoughts 
and letters were mostly polemical; ideal elements of 
morality were growing up in him, and radical views of 
conduct getting a hold in his convictions. He was willful, 
precipitate, and heedless through inexperience; he was 
thrown the more upon himself, and given a violent turn 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY n 

toward rebellion, to which he was prone enough, by his 
expulsion from Oxford, and the senseless attempt of his 
family to make him suppress his mental and moral life 
by denying his first dear conclusions. In this state, partly 
from adventure and restlessness, perhaps, but also from a 
sense of obligation, the desire to spread his gospel, and 
by the mere favor of circumstances, he married his first 
wife, though he knew that his sympathies were more 
engaged than his heart. 

At Edinburgh, whither the pair had gone, Hogg joined 
them, and with him they returned to York, where Shel- 
ley left his wife in his friend's care during a brief neces- 
sary absence. Hogg, who appears to have been not so 
pure as might be wished in his university days, tried to 
seduce her; and when Shelley came back he learned the 
facts. He loved Hogg; he was ashamed, he wrote, to 
tell him how much he loved him ; he was grateful to him 
for having stood by him and shared his expulsion from the 
college; and he placed the most extravagant estimate 
upon his abilities. What followed upon the disclosure 
Shelley himself tells in a letter written at the time: — 

"We walked to the fields beyond York. I desired to 
know fully the account of this affair. I heard it from 
him, and I believe he was sincere. All I can recollect 
of that terrible day was that I pardoned him — fully, 
freely pardoned him; that I would still be a friend to 
him, and hoped soon to convince him how lovely virtue 
was; that his crime, not himself, was the object of my 
detestation; that I value a human being not for what it 
has been, but for what it is; that I hoped the time would 
come when he would regard his horrible error with as 
much disgust as I did. He said little; he was pale, 
terror-struck, remorseful." 



12 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

One may smile at this episode, if he be cynical, and 
has left youth far enough behind; but for all that, there 
is something pathetic in these sentences of boyish good- 
ness, this simple belief in the moral principles which Shel- 
ley had found in his first search, and to which he had 
given the allegiance of his unworn heart; and in this 
scene of forgiveness, still confused with the emotions of 
first friendship betrayed, one perceives the Shelley we 
know, though he was not yet out of his teens. Some time 
elapsed before Shelley realized all the incident meant; 
then he wrote, "I leave him to his fate;" and when they 
met again in London, the old footing was gone forever. 

Godwin, too, affords a capital example of a shattered 
ideal. He was the Socrates of the young poet, and 
Shelley, who derived the main articles of his political and 
social creed from the radical philosopher's great book, 
was already adoring him as one in the pantheon of the 
immortal dead, when he learned from Southey that his 
master and emancipator still walked the earth. He sat 
down at once and wrote a characteristic epistle, in which 
he expressed himself with the enthusiasm of a disciple 
not yet twenty, and respectfully but earnestly besought 
the living friendship and advice of him whom he re- 
garded as the light of the new age. Godwin was inter- 
ested, and long and frequent letters, admirable in tone 
upon both sides, passed between them. The elder en- 
deavored to check the irrepressible activity and eager 
plans of the young reformer, who had no notion of waiting 
until he should grow old before setting to work to remake 
society; and the youth, on his part, exhibited a deference 
and willingness to be guided such as he never showed 
before or afterwards. The first modification of Shel- 
ley's idea of Godwin came in consequence of their per- 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 13 

sonal acquaintance, as was natural; but in discovering 
that Godwin was really an idiosyncratic mortal, as well 
as an illuminating intellect, Shelley did not yield his 
admiration for the sage. One can still see the unbounded 
astonishment of the poet, which Mary Godwin describes, 
when she told him her father was annoyed by his address- 
ing him as "Mr." instead of "Esq." in directing his let- 
ters. They got on very well together, however, until 
Shelley ran away with Mary — a practical exposition of 
Godwin's doctrines, which he, having now grown re- 
spectable and socially cautious, did not at all relish. 
Shelley had before this aided Godwin somewhat in 
financial embarrassments. That philosopher was always 
in debt; and the young disciple, who, though the heir 
to a great property, had no way of realizing from it 
except by selling post-obit bonds, agreed with his master 
that philosophers have a paramount claim on any money 
their friends might own. He was willing to discharge 
his duty by getting Godwin out of debt, or assisting him 
as far as he could in the matter. When he returned to 
England with Mary he found that the philosopher would 
not see or forgive him, and positively declined to corre- 
spond except upon the subject of how much money Shel- 
ley could give him. Shelley had no thought of not doing 
his own duty, because of the conduct of other people; and 
while he felt Godwin's hardness and inconsistency, never- 
theless he would relieve that great mind from the little 
annoyances consequent on borrowing money without pro- 
viding means of repayment. He, however, was not blind ; 
and what he learned of Godwin in the course of these 
transactions had a destroying influence upon that ideal 
of the man which he had formed in his first days of 
revolutionary hope. In the second year of his life with 



i 4 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Mary he told the philosopher what he thought of the 
whole matter in a letter which one may be excused for 
reading with peculiar satisfaction: — 

"It has perpetually appeared to me to have been your 
especial duty to see that, so far as mankind value your 
good opinion, we were dealt justly by, and that a young 
family, innocent and benevolent and united, should not 
be confounded with prostitutes and seducers. My 
astonishment, and, I will confess, when I have been 
treated with most hardness and cruelty by you, my indig- 
nation, has been extreme, that, knowing as you do my 
nature, any considerations should have prevailed on you 
to have been thus harsh and cruel. I lamented also over 
my ruined hopes of all that your genius once taught me 
to expect from your virtue, when I found that for your- 
self, your family, and your creditors you would submit 
to that communication with me which you once rejected 
and abhorred, and which no pity for my poverty or suffer- 
ings, assumed willingly for you, could avail to extort. Do 
not talk of forgiveness again to me, for my blood boils 
in my veins, and my gall rises against all that bears the 
human form, when I think of what I, their benefactor 
and ardent lover, have endured of enmity and contempt 
from you and from all mankind." 

The writer was that youth of twenty-three years, of 
whom Godwin remarks that he knew "that Shelley's 
temper was occasionally fiery, resentful, and indignant." 
It is true that it was so, and one is pleased to find upon 
what fit occasions it broke out. Shelley, however, had 
undertaken a hopeless and endless task in trying to extri- 
cate Godwin from debt, and he spent much money, raised 
at a great sacrifice, in the vain attempt. What he 
thought of these transactions, when his judgment had 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 15 

matured, we know from another delightfully plain-spoken 
letter, written five years later, in answer to renewed im- 
portunities: — 

"I have given you the amount of a considerable fortune, 
and have destituted myself, for the purpose of realizing 
it, of nearly four times the amount. Except for the 
good-will which this transaction seems to have produced 
between you and me, this money, for any advantage it 
ever conferred on you, might as well have been thrown 
into the sea. Had I kept in my own hands this £4,000 
or £5,000, and administered it in trust for your perma- 
nent advantage, I should indeed have been your bene- 
factor. The error, however, was greater in the man of 
mature age, extensive experience, and penetrating intel- 
lect than in the crude and impetuous boy. Such an error 
is seldom committed twice." 

But long before this, Shelley, though his estimate of 
Godwin's powers, in common with that of the people 
of the time, remained extravagant, had found out the 
difference between the author of "Political Justice" and 
Plato and Bacon. 

If any one wonders at the extent to which Shelley let 
himself be fleeced by the philosophical radical of Skinner 
Street, he should reserve some astonishment for the 
remainder of the shearers. Shelley, it is to be remem- 
bered, was never in possession of his property, and had 
only a small allowance at first, and a thousand pounds 
a year after he was twenty-four years old ; he was extrava- 
gant in his generosity, and gave money with a free hand, 
whenever he had any, to the poor about him, to his needy 
friends, and to causes of one kind and another which 
excited in him his passion for philanthropy. He was, 
consequently, in his early days, commonly in debt for his 



1 6 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

own expenses, and often in danger of arrest and im- 
prisonment. When he mentioned his days of poverty, 
in that letter to Godwin, it was not a mere phrase; and 
though a settlement was at last made which provided 
for him sufficiently, he was never ahead in his savings. 
Under these circumstances, his biography at times re- 
minds one of the old comedy, with its mob of parasites 
and legacy-hunters. He was simply victimized by those 
who could establish any claim on his benevolence. No 
doubt he gave willingly, with all his heart, to Peacock 
and Leigh Hunt and the rest, as he did to Godwin, and 
thought it was his duty as well as his pleasure; but his 
generosity does not alter the fact that his acquaintances 
were very dull of conscience in money matters. One 
begins to relent a little toward Hogg, remembering that 
he did actually share his own funds with Shelley just 
after the expulsion from Oxford, when the latter could 
get no money, owing to his father's displeasure; and for 
Horace Smith, the banker, who sometimes advanced 
money to Shelley, and not too much, one has a feeling of 
amazed respect. 

The worst misfortune of Shelley, however, in the 
friends he made, was to have met and married Harriet 
Westbrook. The circumstances of their union and its 
unlucky course and tragical close have lately been for 
the first time fully set forth. The marriage on Shelley's 
side was not originally one of love, but it became one of 
affection. For two years life went on without the dis- 
covery of anything to break the happiness of the pair; 
but after the birth of their first child trouble arose, and 
rapidly culminated. It is most likely that the sister-in- 
law, Eliza, who lived with them, was the source of the 
original dissension by her interference, arbitrariness, and 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 17 

control of Harriet; but, as Shelley had grown in mind 
and character, the difference between him and his wife 
in endowment and in taste was bound to make itself 
felt, and to put an end to the unity of study and spirit 
of which he had dreamed; and it is clear enough that 
she had tired of the studies and the purposes in which 
Shelley's life consisted, and that though overborne for a 
time, by his influence, she was now showing herself 
worldly, frivolous, and weak. She had married the heir 
to a baronetcy and a fortune, and desired to profit by it. 
In one way and another she had become hard and un- 
yielding toward Shelley, had made him thoroughly 
miserable, and, in the earlier months of 1814, was living 
away from him; and he, on his side, as late as May in 
that year, as appears from stanzas now first printed, was 
trying to soften her. While affairs were in this condi- 
tion he first met Mary Godwin, and he fell passionately 
in love with her, all the more because of the long strain 
of dejection and loneliness; and in addition to the story 
of the dissensions that had arisen in his family, and the 
difference of character and temperament which had de- 
clared itself between his wife and himself, Shelley is said 
to have told Mary that Harriet had been unfaithful to 
him. If he did not tell her then, he did afterwards. 
On what evidence he relied we do not know; nor is there 
any confirmatory proof from other quarters except a 
letter of Godwin's written after Harriet's suicide, in 
which he states the same fact as coming from unquestion- 
able authority unconnected with Shelley. Not long be- 
fore his death Shelley renewed the charge, though in a 
veiled and inferential way, in a letter to Southey, in 
which he defends himself for his conduct in this matter, 
declares his innocence of any harm done or intended, 



1 8 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

refuses to be held responsible for the suicide of Harriet, 
and practically asserts that he had grounds for divorce, 
had he chosen to free himself in that way. There is 
no need to prove that Shelley was right in his belief 
of his wife's infidelity; but if it be thought that Shelley 
did in truth believe her guilty, that has much to do with 
our estimate of his action. He was twenty-two years 
old, or nearly that, and he held radical views as to the 
permanence and sacredness of the marriage bond, as 
also did Mary, who inherited them from her mother. 
Their decision to unite their lives, under these circum- 
stances, was a practical admission that Shelley's home 
was in fact broken up, and that he was free to offer, 
and Mary to accept, not legal union, but a common home, 
with the expectation and purpose of complete devotion 
one to the other, in pure spirit and for the ordinary ends 
of marriage. 

Shelley did not proceed secretly. He summoned Har- 
riet, who had not thought of such serious results of her 
action, to London, and told her what he was going to do. 
She did not consent to the separation, nor does she seem 
to have regarded it as final. Shelley had a settlement 
made for her by the lawyers, provided credit for her, and 
two weeks after the interview left England with Mary. 
He wrote to Harriet on the journey, assured her of his 
affection and his care for her, and indulged a plan that 
she should live near them, which is, perhaps, the most 
surprising instance of Shelley's purity of mind, and of 
the unworldliness or unreality, as one chooses to call it, 
of his conception of how human life might be lived. On 
his return he saw her, and agreed to leave the children 
with her; and when his allowance was fixed at a thousand 
pounds, he gave orders to honor her drafts for two hun- 






REMARKS ON SHELLEY 19 

dred pounds annually. She had an equal amount from 
her own family, which had been paid since the beginning 
of their married life. When Shelley left England the 
second time, she was thus provided for, one would think, 
sufficiently. On his return he lost sight of her, and was 
anxiously inquiring for her, when the news of her suicide 
reached him. She had put the children, of whom the 
eldest was three years old, out to board, at a time when 
he was ill; she had not been permitted to see her father; 
but the circumstances immediately surrounding her death 
are not known. Shelley, though he bore his share of 
natural sorrow for the death of one to whom he had been 
tenderly attached, did not hold himself guilty of any 
wrong. 

It is no wonder that in the last few years of his life 
Shelley would not talk of his earlier days, and had a kind 
of shame in remembering in what ruin his hopes and 
purposes and the enthusiasm of his youth had fallen; he 
felt it as an indignity to the nobleness of spirit which, 
in spite of all his failures, he knew had been his through- 
out. As we see those years, it is only for himself that 
we prize them; and it is a pleasure to be enabled to look 
on them free from that saddening retrospect of his own 
mind, and observe how natural and simple he really was. 
No one has ever had the days of his youth so laid open 
to the common gaze, and this is one charm of his per- 
sonality, that we know him as a brother or a friend. The 
pages afford many happy anecdotes; but one can linger 
here only to mark the constant playfulness of Shelley, 
which was a bright element in his earlier career and not 
altogether absent in his Italian life. The passion for 
floating paper-boats, which he indulged unweariedly, is 
well known; but at all times he was ready for sport, and 



20 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

could even trifle with his dearest plans, as in the flotilla 
of bottles and aerial navy of fire-balloons, all loaded with 
revolutionary pamphlets, which he sent forth on the 
Devonshire coast. His running about the little garden, 
hand in hand with Harriet; his impersonating fabulous 
monsters with Leigh Hunt's children, who begged him 
"not to do the horn"; and his favorite sport with his 
little temporarily adopted Marlow girl, of placing her on 
the dining-table, and rushing with it across the long 
room, are instances that readily recur to mind, and illus- 
trate the gaiety and high spirits which really belonged 
to him, and which perhaps the Serchio last knew when 
it bore him and his boat on his summer-day voyages. 
This side of his nature ought to be remembered, as well 
as that "occasionally fiery, resentful, and indignant" 
quality which Godwin observed, and the intense and 
restless practicality of the impatient reformer, when one 
thinks of Shelley (as he has been too often represented) 
as only a morbid, sensitive, idealizing poet, of a rather 
feminine spirit. That portrait of him is untruthful, for 
he was of a most masculine, active, and naturally joyful 
nature. 

After he left England for the last time, and took up his 
abode in Italy, principally, it would seem, because of the 
social reproach and public stigma under which he lived, 
and by which he felt deeply wronged, he was not really 
much more fortunate in his company. The immediate 
reason for the journey was to take Byron's natural daugh- 
ter, Allegra, to her father at Venice; the mother, Miss 
Clairmont, went with them, and, as it turned out, con- 
tinued to be a member of Shelley's family, as she had 
been since his union with Mary. It is now known that 
the Shelleys were ignorant of the liaison, both when it 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 21 

began in London, and afterward when they first met 
Byron at Geneva; but Shelley had a warm affection for 
Miss Clairmont, whose friendliness appealed to his sym- 
pathy, and he spent much time in Italy in trying to make 
Byron do his duty toward Allegra, and to soften the ill- 
nature of her parents toward each other. Byron's conduct 
in this matter was a powerful element in generating in Shel- 
ley that thorough contempt he expressed for the former 
as a man. But though Shelley's most winning qualities 
are to be observed, and his tact was conspicuously called 
forth by their negotiations in regard to the child, yet the 
connection with Miss Clairmont was unfortunate. That 
it repeatedly drew scandal upon him was a minor matter; 
it was of more consequence that in his family she was 
a disturbing element, and Mary, who had disliked to 
have her as an inmate almost from the first, finally 
insisted on her withdrawal, but not until frequent dis- 
agreements had sadly marred the peace of Shelley's 
home. Mary, indeed, was not perfect, any more than 
other very young wives; and by her jealousies, and yet 
more, it seems, by her attempts to make Shelley con- 
form to the world, especially in the last year or two, 
she tried and harassed him; and so it came about that 
his love took the form of tenderness of her welfare and 
feelings, and often of despondency for himself. Miss 
Clairmont was a source of continual trouble for him in 
many ways: she was of an unhappy temperament and 
hard to live with; but with his long-enduring and chari- 
table disposition, and his extraordinary tenacity in 
attachment, and perfect readiness to admit the least 
obligation upon him, proceeding from any one in trouble, 
he never wavered in his devotion to her interests and care 
for her happiness. It is a curious fact that Miss Clair- 



22 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

mont, who lived to be very old, manipulated the written 
records of this portion of her life, so that her evidence 
is of very questionable worth, though better, one hopes, 
than that of her mother, the second Mrs. Godwin, whose 
lying about the Shelleys was of the most wholesale and 
conscienceless kind. 

As with Miss Clairmont, so in a less degree with 
others of the Italian circle. But enough has been said of 
the character of the people whom Shelley knew. It can- 
not be that they cut so poor a figure because of Shelley's 
presence, hard as the contrast of common human nature 
must be with him. It is observable, and it is in some 
sort a test, that he did not overvalue them. Hogg, Pea- 
cock, and Medwin were all deceived, if they thought 
he trusted them or held them closer than mere friendly 
acquaintances; there is no evidence that he felt for 
Williams or Trelawney any more than an affectionate 
good will; toward Leigh Hunt he had the kindest feel- 
ing of gratitude and of respect, and for Gisborne and 
Reveley a warm cordiality, but nothing more. Mary 
he loved, though with full knowledge of her weaknesses, 
in a manly way; for Miss Clairmont he had a true affec- 
tion; and he recognized poetically a womanly attractive- 
ness in Mrs. Williams, who seems to have represented 
to him the spirit of restfulness and peace, in the last 
months of his life. But at the end, his errors respecting 
men and things being swept away, his ideals removed 
into the eternal world, and his disillusion complete, the 
most abiding impression is of the loneliness in which 
he found himself; and remembering this, one forgets 
the companions he had upon his journey, and fastens at- 
tention more closely upon the man through whose genius 
that journey has become one of undying memory. 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 23 

There is no thought of eulogizing him in saying that 
he represents the ideal of personal and social aspiration, 
of the love of beauty and of virtue equally, and of the 
hope of eradicating misery from the world ; hence springs 
in large measure his hold on young hearts, on those who 
value the spirit above all else and do not confine their 
recognition of it within too narrow bounds, and on all 
who are believers in the reform of the world by human 
agencies. He represents this ideal of aspiration in its 
most impassioned form; and in his life one reads the 
saddest history of disillusion. It is because, in the 
course of this, he abated no whit of his lifelong hope, 
did not change his practice of virtue, and never yielded 
his perfect faith in the supreme power of love, both in 
human life and in the universe, that his name has be- 
come above all price to those over whom his influence 
extends. It is, perhaps, more as a man than as a poet 
merely that he is beloved; the shadows upon his reputa- 
tion, as one approaches nearer, are burnt away in light; 
and he is the more honored, the more he is known. For 
it would be wrong to close even these informal remarks 
without expressing dissent from the assumption that Shel- 
ley's intellectual and moral life was one long mistake. 
Disillusion it was, and the nature of it has been indicated 
by the single point of his acquaintances; but a life of 
disillusion and one of mere mistake are not to be con- 
founded together. Better fortune cannot be asked for a 
youth than that he should conceive life nobly, and, in 
finding wherein it falls short, should yet not fall short 
himself of his ideal beyond what may be forgiven to 
human frailty. Shelley's misconceptions were the con- 
ditions of his living the ideal life at all, and differed from 
those of other youths in face of an untried world only 



24 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

by their moral elevation, passion, and essential nobleness; 
he matured as other men do by time and growth and 
experience, and he suffered much by the peculiar circum- 
stances of his fate; but in the issue the substance of 
error in his life was less than it seems. Shelley, at least, 
never admitted he had been wrong in the essential doc- 
trines of his creed and the motives of his acts, though he 
had been deceived in regard to human nature and what 
was possible to it in society. 



III. HIS ITALIAN LETTERS. 

The prose work of Shelley has remained in the ob- 
scurity which it once shared with his poetry. The formal 
essays, which concern the transitory affairs of the world 
or themes of thought remote through their generality, 
are valued, even by admirers of Shelley, mainly as media 
of his spirit; the familiar letters, scattered in old books, 
or collected only in a costly edition, and deprived of 
interest effectiveness because those of high and enduring 
interest have never been selected and massed until re- 
cently, have escaped any wide public attention; even 
the translations have been neglected. All this really 
large body of prose, however exalted by its informing 
enthusiasm, however exquisite in language, and melodious, 
lies outside the open pathways of literature. It is this 
fact which gave the element of surprise to what Mr. 
Arnold called his doubt "whether Shelley's delightful 
"Essays and Letters," which deserve to be far more read 
than they are now, will not resist the wear and tear 
of time better, and finally come to stand higher, than his 
poetry," — a judgment which well deserved Dr. Garnett's 
quiet rejoinder that "this deliverance will be weighed by 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 25 

those to whose lot it may fall to determine Mr. Arnold's 
own place as a critic." Dr. Garnett adds that, in an age 
when all letters approximate to the ideal set by men of 
business, Shelley's alone, among those of his time, rank 
with Gray's, Pope's, Cowper's, or Walpole's in possessing 
a certain classical impress similar to that of deliberate 
artistic work; and, secondly, that they exhibit the mind of 
the poet as clearly as Marlborough's do the mind of the 
general, or Macaulay's the mind of the man of letters. 
Their two prime qualities are beauty of form and trans- 
parency; fitness of words, sweetness of cadence, mod- 
ulation of feeling in immediate response to thought 
and image, all conspiring to make up perfection of utter- 
ance, are continually present, but not through erasure and 
elaboration. Shelley's self-training in literature, almost 
unrivaled as an apprenticeship in its length and continu- 
ity, more comprehensive, profound, and ardent than 
Pope's, more vital than Milton's, had made such literary 
lucidity and grace the habit of his pen, and he was for- 
tunate in employing his gift upon subjects intrinsically 
most interesting to cultivated men: upon the art and 
landscape of Italy, or his own always high human rela- 
tions, or his poetic moods. 

In what he says of statues and paintings he shows but 
slight knowledge of art. The keenness of his perceptions 
and the warmth of his feelings made him particularly 
open to sensuous effects, so that in general he worships 
the later schools. In painting, especially, he can hardly 
be considered a safe guide for others, because his praise 
or censure is largely dependent on his temperament for 
its justification: a picture which is consonant with his own 
imagination, and stirs it, is thereby raised and glorified, 
J)ut one whose theme would have been differently de- 



26 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

veloped by himself is at once made pale by contrast witK 
the quick visions of his own vividly pictorial mind. Here 
is a portion of his description of a Christ Beatified: — 

"The countenance is heavy, as it were, with the rapture 
of the spirit; the lips parted, but scarcely parted, with 
the breath of intense but regulated passion; the eyes are 
calm and benignant; the whole features harmonized in 
majesty and sweetness." 

One cannot but feel that the face which Shelley thus 
summons up before us bears the same relation to the 
original as what the dull-minded call his plagiarisms 
from Lodge do to that poet's lyrics. Shelley often paints 
the picture over upon the outlines of the old canvas; but 
this transforming or penetrating power, as it will be 
differently named just as one believes the given picture 
to lack or possess what Shelley saw in it, lends such 
passages not only surpassing beauty, but a real value as 
interpretations of art. Much as Ruskin would differ 
from Shelley's judgments, the two are essentially similar 
in their mode of treatment, and in their faculty of giving 
the equivalent of form and color in eloquence. 

The description of landscape, which is another prin- 
cipal topic, possesses even more plainly classic beauty. 
Whether Shelley writes of nature in her wild and pic- 
turesque scenes, or where the presence of man has added 
pathos or dignity to her loveliness; whether he flashes 
the view upon us in one perfect line, or unfolds it slowly 
in unconfused detail, he displays the highest power in 
this field of literature. This view from the Forum of 
Pompeii, which, instead of being robed with "the gray 
veil of his own words," seems filled with "the purple 
noon's transparent light," cannot be surpassed as speech 
at once familiar and noble : — 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 27 

"At the upper end, supported on an elevated platform, 
stands the temple of Jupiter. Under the colonnade of 
its portico we sate, and pulled out our oranges, and 
figs, and bread, and medlars — sorry fare, you will say 
— and rested to eat. Here was a magnificent spectacle. 
Above and between the multitudinous shafts of the sun- 
shining columns was seen the sea, reflecting the purple 
noon of heaven above it, and supporting, as it were, on 
its line the dark, lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue 
inexpressibly deep, and tinged toward their summits with 
streaks of new-fallen snow. Between was one small green 
island. To the right was Caprese, Inarime, Prochyta, 
and Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Vesu- 
vius, rolling forth volumes of thick white smoke, whose 
foam-like column was sometimes darted into the clear 
dark sky, and fell in little streaks along the wind. Be- 
tween Vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as through a 
chasm, was seen the main line of the loftiest Apennines 
to the east. The day was radiant and warm. Every now 
and then we heard subterranean thunder of Vesuvius ; its 
distant, deep peals seemed to shake the very air and light 
of day, which interpenetrated our frames with the sullen 
and tremendous sound." 

Thus he wrote when merely passive to nature's influ- 
ences; but when he begins to think he irradiates the 
scene; he lifts it with his aspiration and softens it with 
his regret; he brings it near by reminiscences of the 
English fields and cliffs and streams; he informs it with 
the large interests of the intellectual life; and not in- 
frequently he concludes with a passage which, in the 
arrangement of its images, the sequence of its thought 
and feeling, the unity of its effect, in all except metrical 
structure, is a poem. Many paragraphs might be cited 



2 8 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

which show the character of his genius as directly as 
do his verses, and which justify the claim advanced for 
them as having the permanent interest of ideal beauty. 

The principal charm of these letters, however, as Dr. 
Garnett says, is not artistic, but moral. It is not meant 
to refer by this term to the practical morality of Shel- 
ley's deeds, or to his conscientiousness, humanity, self- 
sacrifice, or other such qualities as they are here dis- 
played; of these there is no longer need to speak. Nor 
is it meant simply to express the gratification one feels 
at finding that Shelley, unlike many men of letters who 
disappoint us by being only common mortals in private 
life, never falls below our conception of him, indicative as 
it is of his purity that his "unpremeditated song" does 
not fail to reach the height of his great argument. What 
impresses one most is rather the character of the life 
itself, of the mind to which "trust in all things high came 
natural," that moved with equal ease among the things 
of beauty, on the heights of thoughts, or amid the com- 
mon and trivial cares of household life and in the offices 
of friendship, and knew no difference in the level of his 
life, so single was his nature and so completely expressed 
in all he did. In the most ideal passages, in those most 
impersonal, one does not lose the sense of friendliness in 
them, of the sweet human relationship which underlies 
the telling of what he has to say, and keeps the letters in 
their appropriate sphere. They are not rhapsodies, or 
soliloquies, or disquisitions; in other words, the visita- 
tions of the spirit that came to Shelley, and left record 
of themselves in this beauty and eloquence and imagi- 
native passion, did not isolate him even momentarily, 
and could not sever him from his friends. Who these 
were, we know well enough: Miss Hitchener, the blue- 



REMARKS ON SHELLEY 29 

stocking; Hogg, the betrayer; the Williams and Gis- 
bornes, who seem to have belonged to the class of people 
known as satisfying; Peacock, who, with all his nym- 
pholepsy, was a born beef-eater; Smith, the obliging; 
Hunt, the "wren," and Byron, the "eagle," in Shelley's 
nomenclature — the too fortunate people who knew Shel- 
ley and whom he loved. They formed the environment, 
which needs to be kept in mind by any who would esti- 
mate Shelley's moral power; amid them he lived his high 
life and made it theirs, in the case of the most, during 
their communion with him. In a vague analogical way 
he sometimes brings to mind the Greek gods, who, with all 
their divine attributes of beauty, power, dignity, were 
singular among deities for their companionableness; 
Shelley had that divine quality of being familiar and re- 
taining his original brightness. Toward Byron alone 
does he show any repulsion; he recognized Byron's ad- 
mirable qualities, but he was alienated by the latter's 
selfishness, worldliness, and earthliness, even while he 
kept terms of amity. Shelley's sentence on Byron is 
most serious evidence against him, and it is now sup- 
ported by much that Shelley could not have known; but 
it need not be discussed here. 

It is especially fortunate that the letters exhibit him 
after his boyhood, with its false starts, its follies and 
prejudices, its narrowness and confusion, was passed; 
of that time we get only a noble echo in his sad remem- 
brance, amid his seeming failure, of the lofty purpose 
with which he had entered life, while we see the depth 
unconfused by the tumult of his soul. In these last 
years, it is true, the thwarting of his practical instinct 
was ending in hopelessness; but if the earthly paradise 
that was the faith of his youth was now fading away, 



3 o LITERARY MEMOIRS 

he was lifting his eyes to the city in the heavens, and had 
acknowledged the vanity of seeking the ideal he knew, 
except in the eternal; he had worked out his salvation. 
Perhaps after all we do wrong to lament his death; with 
that tragedy, in which every thought of Shelley involun- 
tarily concludes, his work as a quickener of the spirit 
was accomplished. More finished works of art he might 
have given to us; he could not have left a nobler or 
more enkindling memory. These letters help in the 
still necessary labor of clearing away the misconceptions 
concerning him. In them one sees him only in the quiet 
of his soul, and will come to a better knowledge and 
perhaps a higher truth concerning him than is possible 
by reading his changeful poems alone. 



SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT, COLERIDGE, 
AND WORDSWORTH 

Sir George Beaumont appears to have been one of 
the most agreeable of men. He had not merely high 
breeding, but humanity of disposition, delightful compan- 
ionableness, and the refinement that springs from artistic 
pursuits. Haydon accuses his manners of a want of 
moral courage. "What his taste dictated to be right, he 
would shrink from asserting if it shocked the prejudices 
of others or put himself to a moment's inconvenience," 
was the fault that this critic had in mind ; but this is only 
to class him with the men who do not think that the 
truth is always to be spoken in society, and prefer tact 
to an aggressive egotism. Sir Humphry Davy notices 
especially that he was a "remarkably sensible man, which 
I mention because it is somewhat remarkable in a painter 
of genius who is at the same time a man of rank and an 
exceedingly amusing companion." Southey was struck 
by the apparent happiness of his life, and the absence of 
any reference to afflictions or anxieties that he might have 
experienced, and says that he "had as little liking for 
country sports as for public business of any kind," be- 
ing absorbed by art and nature; and, to add Scott's kind 
words of him in his diary, that excellent judge writes, 
"Sir George Beaumont's dead; by far the most sensible 
and pleasing man I ever knew. Kind, too, in his nature, 
and generous — gentle in society, and of those mild man- 
ners which tend to soften the causticity of the general 

31 



32 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

London tone of persiflage and personal satire. I am 
very sorry — as much as it is in my nature to be — for 
one whom I could see but seldom." This is a concert 
of praise which it is a pleasure to associate with the name 
of the man who was, chiefly, the founder of the National 
Gallery in Trafalgar Square. 

He was a friend of the artists of his time, and a 
patron of Wilkie and Haydon when they needed aid. 
In the latter's autobiography there is a bright account 
of a fortnight's visit paid by these two to Coleorton, 
Sir George's country-seat, which brings the interior life 
there vividly to the eye, though it borrows something 
from the unconscious humor of the narrator, who always 
fills the scene with himself in the leading part. One 
pauses to note a characteristic sentence of the incor- 
rigible beggar in which he breaks out with the indig- 
nant remark, "All my friends were always advising me 
what to do instead of advising the Government what 
to do for me." Sir George, however, had other friends, 
and most noteworthy of all, Wordsworth, of whom he 
first heard from Coleridge. Before meeting him, un- 
derstanding that the two friends wished to live in the 
same neighborhood, he bought and presented to Words- 
worth the little property of Applethwaite near Greta 
Hall, Coleridge's abode. Wordsworth never used the 
ground for the purpose for which it was given, but it 
remained in his possession. From this time, 1803, a close 
friendship grew up between his family at Grasmere and 
the one at Coleorton, grounded upon common interests 
and cemented with mutual exchanges of kindness and 
regard, so that it survived until the death of Sir George 
and Lady Beaumont, herself an excellent woman, of 
whom Crabb Robinson wrote "She is a gentlewoman of 



BEAUMONT, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH $ s 

great sweetness and dignity, I should think among the 
most interesting persons in the country." 

Of the two poets Coleridge was at first more inti- 
mate with the Beaumonts. This was in 1803, the period 
of his illness, just previous to the voyage to Malta. The 
letters he wrote are very painful to read. The sub- 
ject is usually the ego; and in reading the apologies 
of the writer for treating of this ever-present theme, and 
his observations on his own lack of vanity and the 
danger he is in of undervaluing his powers and works, 
one can scarcely fail to be struck by the identity in many 
respects of the egotism of the overweening and of the 
self-depreciating kinds. The aspects are different, but 
the weakness has the same root. In Coleridge it was, 
perhaps, no more than a question of the state of his 
stomach whether his assiduous interest in himself should 
result in intellectual pride or in self-abasement; but 
without giving too severe a touch, it is clear enough that 
his eye, when fixed on himself, was on the wrong object. 

The letters to the Beaumonts are characterized by 
this complaining and absorbing egotism of the invalid, 
unfortified by patience, resolution, or even self-respect. 
The ravages of disease in its physical aspects, the laying 
bare of bodily conditions and symptoms of decay, would 
be in themselves intolerably disagreeable, but it is much 
worse to be obliged to attend at the sick-bed of the 
mind; and in Coleridge's case the internal weakness of 
the spirit excites the greatest pity, and this feeling nearly 
passes involuntarily into disgust. The sensibility of his 
nervous organization was acute. He speaks of times 
when, as he was accusing himself of insensibility through 
incapacity to feel, his "whole frame has gone crash, as 
it were." Under the excitement of his emotions, he 



34 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

dissolves in weakness; the spectacle is not a pleasant one; 
there is something almost ignoble in such loss of self- 
control. When Wordsworth recited to him, if one can 
fancy such a thing, the entire thirteen books on the 
growth of his own mind, in 1807, Coleridge composed 
a poem, not very coherent or noble, though with personal 
pathos, in which he says that when he rose from his seat, 
he "found himself in prayer." It was apparently not 
an unusual termination to the access of emotion, and 
it occurred more than once in his relations with the 
Beaumonts. The mention of it, however, in his corre- 
spondence with them, offends one, not in itself, but by 
the manner of it; indeed, the manner of his earlier let- 
ters is indescribable. Their sentiment is so tremulous 
and overwrought with fever that they resemble maunder- 
ing; they are "sicklied o'er" with mental disease, and 
belong to the pathology of genius. 

One long epistle, in which he devotes himself to an 
analysis of his mental condition at the time when he 
was what is now known as a Social Democrat, shows by 
an eminent example in what ways the minds of young 
men of enthusiasm, who have caught the contagion of 
new ideas, commonly act, and how their tongues are 
kept going. Coleridge and Southey were rampant 
young radicals for about ten months, and might many 
times have been justly thrown into jail for the use of 
unlawful language and seditiously fomenting the passions 
of the people. Coleridge ascribes the beginning of his 
ramblings from the true path of respectable politics 
partly to his intellectual isolation among his relatives 
and virtuous acquaintances generally, who thought that 
his "opinions were the drivel of a babe, but the guilt 
attached to them — this was the gray hair and rigid 



BEAUMONT, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH 35 

muscle of inveterate depravity;" and partly, he declares, 
it was due to the thirst for kindness planted in himself, 
in the "me, who," he says, "from my childhood have had 
no avarice, no ambition, whose very vanity in my vainest 
moments was nine-tenths of it the desire and delight 
and necessity of loving and of being beloved," — needs 
which he found satisfied in the welcome and company 
of "the Democrats." So he fell among evil companions. 
On becoming an agitator upon the platform he suc- 
cumbed to the temptations of the fluent speaker, gifted 
"with an ebullient fancy, a flowing utterance, a light 
and dancing heart, and a disposition to catch time by 
the very rapidity of my own motion, and to speak 
vehemently from mere verbal associations; choosing 
sentences and sentiments for the very reason which 
would have made me recoil with a dying away of the 
heart and unutterable horror from the actions expressed 
in such sentiments and sentences, namely, because they 
were wild and original, and vehement and fantastic." 
Here is a choice specimen of his eloquence, on the oc- 
casion of a supper by some lord, to commemorate an 
Austrian victory: "This is a true Lord's Supper in the 
communion of darkness! This is a Eucharist of Hell! 
a sacrament of misery! over each morsel and each drop 
of which the spirit of some murdered innocent cries 
aloud to God, This is my body! and this is my blood!" 
There is one sin against society, however, which he 
declined to commit, and he took great credit to himself 
for his obstinate refusal. He joined no party, club, or 
any of the radical societies, which he characterizes as 
"ascarides in the bowels of the state, subsisting on the 
weakness and diseasedness, and having for their final 
object the death of that state, whose life had been their 



36 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

birth and growth, and continued to be their soul nourish- 
ment." He remained outside of these entangling alli- 
ances, a free-lance speechifier, in the condition of mind 
of the willing martyr: "The very clank of the chains 
that were to be put about my limbs would not at that 
time have deterred me from a strong phrase or striking 
metaphor, although I had had no other inducement to 
the use of the same except the wantonness of luxuriant 
imagination, and my aversion to abstain from anything 
simply because it was dangerous." Such was Coleridge 
at twenty-four years — the age at which Emmett was 
executed ; whose death called out this long letter of rem- 
iniscences concerning his own career as an agitator, and 
of reflections upon the impulses and justification of 
revolutionary orators, their temptations, errors, and illu- 
sions. He understood the fate of Emmett with greater 
clearness because of this little episode in his own life, 
and it is noticeable that he has the grace not to think that 
the young patriot's career bore too much resemblance 
to his own; but this confession of his foolishness in 
general, spread out somewhat magniloquently before the 
eyes of his aristocratic correspondent, is a lesson in hu- 
man nature well worth a moment's attention from con- 
servative and orderly people. 

Coleridge's career — if a brief digression may be par- 
doned here — was only too much in keeping with the 
temperament of these letters to the Beaumonts. Wher- 
ever one comes upon it in the memoirs of the time, the 
story is the same. Soften it as we may, that career was 
one of those, too frequent among men of letters, that 
can never be told, so marred by disease and by moral 
feebleness, so full of shame and supineness and waste, 
that it must be kept out of sight. During the years 



BEAUMONT, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH 37 

of his maturity he was a broken man, and knew him- 
self to be such; from the time that, in becoming the 
victim of opium, he lost what little will-power was orig- 
inally his, he felt that the spirit of imagination had 
left his house of life, and in its place was henceforward 

"Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, 
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; " 

and in this mood of pervading despondency he seems 
always in fancy to be haunting the grave of his dead self. 
This consciousness of his loss, though it had more of 
the stupor of despair than of the sharpness of penitence, 
lends some impressiveness to his story; but this pain 
was not searching enough to save him for himself, nor of 
a kind to make men oblivious of those violent contrasts 
in his life which offend our sense of Tightness. • It is 
a morally confusing spectacle to see genius professing 
the highest knowledge of the secret things of God, but 
itself wrecked; and it requires something more than the 
poet's sorrow at the withering of his wreath to reconcile 
such an antithesis. 

Then, too, although Coleridge's poetic imagination 
undoubtedly was quenched at once, or gave out only 
brief and random flashes in his manhood, it may well 
be questioned whether the waste of his faculties was not 
due quite as much to mismanagement of the mind as 
to the palsying of his powers of effort, purpose, or 
orderly reduction of thought. He lived in the period 
of universal philosophers, and in his study of meta- 
physics and theology in Germany he must have fixed in 
his mind the habit of including the omne scibile in his 
system. This was the more easy for him, as he had 
in unusual proportion that false comprehensiveness 



38 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

which seizes on knowledge, not by all its relations as 
it stands in the body of science, but by some particular 
relation which it may seem to bear, truly or untruly, to 
some preconceived idea that has been taken as the or- 
ganizing principle of the new scheme. It is because 
of their common participation in this method that poetry 
and philosophy, in the old sense, approach so much nearer 
each other than either does to science. It is plain to 
any one who reads the topics of Coleridge's discourses 
that his mind ranged through a vast circuit of knowledge 
habitually, but also that it touched the facts only at 
single points and superficially; in other words, he dis- 
plays compass rather than grasp. In dealing with the 
mass of his learning, he showed no lack of systematiz- 
ing power, though it may easily be believed that in con- 
versation with chance visitors the fine filaments of logi- 
cal connection escaped their sight. The trouble was in 
the original mode of elaborating the system — the old 
Greek way of philosophizing by subtle manipulation of 
analogies, convenient facts, half-understood harmonies of 
this with that, arbitrary constructions, with now and 
then a dead plunge into the unfathomable. To borrow 
Coleridge's own distinction, this procedure is to logic 
what fancy is to the imagination — a freak of the mind 
partly out of relation to the truth of things. It is the 
modern form of scholasticism. 

Coleridge, however, whose speculative powers were 
thus employed, is believed to have been a great light to 
those who had eyes to see. What particular truth 
Maurice and others derived from him is, nevertheless, 
not evident. He shared the awakening power that 
idealists possess, generally in proportion to their con- 
sistency and the intensity of their personal conviction. 



BEAUMONT, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH 39 

Idealism, by the very fact that it is an enfranchisement 
from sense, is a tonic to the mind; it quickens the 
activity of thought and facilitates its process be- 
cause it assumes the mastery of the universe, and makes 
reality pliable to its hand. This may or may not be 
lawful, but it generates a feeling of command and of 
liberty highly favorable to spiritual development. To 
some men impressionable on that side of their nature 
Coleridge was the giver of this freedom, and this has been 
the case especially with members of the clergy who are 
closely attached to theological dogma. Such persons 
found in Coleridge's mind the rare and curious coexist- 
ence of fixed dogma with incessant speculation: he 
afforded the sense of untrammeled investigation without 
once disturbing the certainty of the prejudged cause. 
This phantom of liberalism was a very quieting tutelar 
genius to some educated men, who thus kept up a sem- 
blance of thinking; but influence of this sort is neces- 
sarily transitory. His Scriptural renderings of philosophy 
give place to those of other theologians, who rationalize 
on new grounds of scientific knowledge instead of Ger- 
man metaphysics, while the stimulation that was fur- 
nished by his idealism may be more simply and directly 
derived from less involved and abstruse thinkers. His 
theology and metaphysics, in pursuit of which he wasted 
his powers, are already seen to be transient. On the 
other hand, his criticism has articulated the works of 
minor authors who have themselves written in a formal 
style, nor has its influence been harmed by its frequent 
over-refinement and fancifulness; and his poetry has 
remained untouched by time. It belongs to the period 
of his early enthusiasm, before he had become too dulled 
for the breath of inspiration to kindle him; and fortu- 



4 o LITERARY MEMOIRS 

nately one can read nearly all the best of it without a 
thought of the dreary after-life of the poet, which has 
no vital interest to any one except as an illustration of 
prolonged failure due to many causes, but not less to a 
lack of mental than of moral self-government. He in- 
filtrated a peculiar intellectual life into the clergy of 
his time, but in them it came to nothing more tangible 
and permanent than in himself. Will it be long before 
Carlyle's picture of the Seer at Highgate will be the 
only supplement to "The Ancient Mariner," so far as the 
general knowledge of Coleridge is concerned, and all 
between nothing but the weariness of the opium-eater's 
hiding? 

Perhaps the serenity of Wordsworth's home at Gras- 
mere gains by the miserable contrast. Thither Coleridge 
came for invigoration ; thither, when he finally separated 
from his wife, he brought or sent the children; and when 
he could not or would not retire to the hospitality and 
pleasant companionship of the household where he found 
the feminine sympathy which he had failed of in his 
own marriage, Wordsworth would set out to visit him 
with moral support and cheer. A different interest united 
Wordsworth and Sir George Beaumont; it was the love 
of nature. Landscape was the subject of their thoughts. 
Sir George painted it, Wordsworth poetized it; in the 
life of both it was a permanent resource to which they 
constantly resorted, and they liked to blend their work 
in this solvent — the pictures of the one becoming a 
text for the poems of the other, and vice versa. The 
interest Wordsworth felt in landscape gardening, in modi- 
fying wild nature, and his ideas regarding the methods 
and aims of the art, are brought out by the part he 
had in planning the grounds at Coleorton. Sir George 



BEAUMONT, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH 41 

rebuilt these, and, in laying out the winter garden in 
particular, he had frequent recourse to the taste of his 
friend; and as Wordsworth was that year occupying 
the old farmhouse on the estate, the business of thinking 
out and overseeing this work was at once diversion and 
restful employment amid his poetic labors. He wrote 
at great length on the subject to Lady Beaumont, and 
laid before her an elaborate plan full of ivy, holly, 
juniper, yews, open sunshine glades, flower-borders, an 
alley, a bower, a spray-fountain, a quarry, a distant 
spire, a pool with two gold-fish, a vine-clad old cottage, 
and other things, which are artificial enough in the read- 
ing, but in reality seem remarkably well fitted to mingle 
the charm of cultivation with the wildness of the ever- 
greens, and make a sheltering retreat where the life of 
nature would linger longest in autumn and revive earli- 
est in the warm sun. 

"Painters and poets," he wrote, "have had the credit 
of being reckoned the fathers of English gardening," and 
he felt thus in the line of succession in the art. It is 
most interesting to observe how he obtains suggestions 
from the poets, and makes their Pegasus plough his field. 
He was, of course, opposed to undue interference with 
nature and the deformity it occasions, and also to the 
ostentation of the wealth or station of the owner. "It 
is a substitution of little things for great when we would 
put a whole country into a noblemen's livery," he says 
with spirit, and, declaring that the laying out of grounds 
is a liberal art not unlike poetry and painting, he goes 
on to protest against the monopoly of nature by the 
great ones of the earth, upon high esthetic grounds. 
"No liberal art," he says, "aims merely at the gratifica- 
tion of an individual or a class; the painter or poet is 



42 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

degraded in proportion as he does so. . . . If this 
be so when we are merely putting together words or 
colors, how much more ought the feeling to prevail when 
we are in the midst of the realities of things. . . . 
What, then, shall we say of many great mansions with 
their unqualified expulsion of human creatures from 
their neighborhood, happy or not — houses which do what 
is fabled of the upas tree — that they breathe out death 
and desolation?" These strictures on the aristocratic 
handling of land he continues for some pages in an 
interesting advocacy of esthetic communism — still a 
suggestive topic. This sense of the beauty and grandeur 
of nature as a universal boon, the desire to humanize 
the landscape without robbing it of its own essential 
character or of the minor charms of its native wildness, 
and a great delight in his own practical work of im- 
proving rubbish heaps, old walls, and broken ground 
into a winter retreat of sunshine and evergreens and 
red-berried vines, with nooks and views fit for a poet's 
walk, are the qualities that still give interest to those 
half dozen letters about planting a waste acre of land. 
On the other hand, his genius, in which susceptibility 
to nature was so dominating a principle, seldom finds 
expression in the prose of his letters with nearly the 
same clearness and purity as in his poems. There is 
one extract, however, which must be given, of a city 
scene from the country poet: — 

"I left Coleridge at seven o'clock on Sunday morning 
and walked towards the city in a very thoughtful and 
melancholy state of mind. I had passed through Temple 
Bar and by St. Dunstan's, noticing nothing, and entirely 
occupied with my own thoughts, when, looking up, I saw 
before me the avenue of Fleet Street, silent, empty, and 



BEAUMONT, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH 43 

pure white, with a sprinkling of new-fallen snow, not a 
cart or a carriage to obstruct the view, no noise, only 
a few soundless and dusky foot-passengers here and 
there. You remember the elegant line of the curve of 
Ludgate Hill in which the avenue would terminate, and 
beyond, and towering above it, was the huge and majestic 
form of St. Paul's solemnized by a thin veil of falling 
snow. I cannot say how much I was affected at this 
unthought-of sight in such a place, and what a blessing 
I felt there is in habits of exalted imagination. My 
sorrow was controlled, and my uneasiness of mind — not 
quieted and relieved altogether — seemed at once to 
receive the gift of an anchor of security." 

This is not poetry, but it is from the same pen as the 
sonnet on Westminster Bridge. 

Besides this taste for landscape, a special interest 
was taken by both friends in what poetry Wordsworth 
was composing from time to time. Wordsworth again 
expatiates on the "awful truth that there neither is, 
nor can be, any genuine enjoyment of poetry among 
nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live, or wish 
to live, in the broad light of the world," that is, in society; 
and again defines his aims, "to console the afflicted; to 
add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy happier; 
to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, 
to think, and feel, and therefore become, more actively 
and securely virtuous," etc. Here, too, are the calm 
and patient confidence in his own immortality, a serene 
foreknowledge of how the matter would end, though 
there are some dark spots in his prevision, as when he 
says that "the people would love Peter Bell" if only the 
critics would let them. It appears, too, that these poets 
were discreet in their confidential criticism of each other, 
and by no means blind to faults. Wordsworth notices 



44 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

that in Southey's verse, notwithstanding picturesqueness 
and romance and a minor touch or two, "there is nothing 
that shows the hand of the great master"; and Cole- 
ridge, with all his adoration for Wordsworth, even when 
declaring that he regarded the tale of the ruined cot- 
tage in the "Excursion" as "the finest poem in our lan- 
guage comparing it with any of the same or similar length," 
could yet put his finger on the very center of weakness 
in Wordsworth. "I have sometimes fancied," he says, 
"that, having by the conjoint operation of his own ex- 
periences, feelings and reasons himself convinced him- 
self of truths which the generality of people have either 
taken for granted from their infancy, or at least adopted 
in early life, he has attached all their own depth and 
weight to doctrines and words which come almost as 
truisms or commonplace to others." 

Wordsworth's last words are a farewell; they illus- 
trate how the love of nature and enjoyment of it, un- 
like most of youthful emotions, gain an increasing glow 
with years, and they express his faith and life in the 
most elementary terms: "I never had a higher relish 
for the beauties of nature than during this spring, nor 
enjoyed myself more. What manifold reason, my dear 
George, have you and I had to be thankful to Provi- 
dence! Theologians may puzzle their heads about 
dogmas as they will; the religion of gratitude cannot 
mislead us. Of that we are sure, and gratitude is the 
handmaid to hope, and hope the harbinger of faith. I 
look abroad upon nature, I think of the best part of 
our species, I lean upon my friends, and I meditate upon 
the Scriptures, especially the Gospel of St. John; and 
my creed rises up of itself with the ease of an exhala- 
tion, yet a fabric of adamant. God bless you, my ever 
dear friend." 



THOMAS POOLE AND HIS FRIENDS 

Whoever has read the memoirs of the Lake School 
must have a lively curiosity to know more of Poole. Cole- 
ridge drew his portrait in a fine passage of "Church 
and State," as a type of strong, practical character. De 
Quincey described him in "Autobiographical Sketches" 
— "a stout, plain-looking farmer leading a bachelor life 
in a rustic, old-fashioned house," with a good library, 
especially in political philosophy, having some experience 
of travel, and "so entirely dedicated to the service of 
his humble fellow-countrymen, the hewers of wood and 
drawers of water in this southern part of Somersetshire, 
that for many miles round he was the general arbiter 
of their disputes, the guide and counsellor of their diffi- 
culties." Wordsworth, in a letter to him asking his criti- 
cal opinion of "Michael," says: "In writing it, I had 
your character often before my eyes, and sometimes 
thought I was delineating such a man as you yourself 
would have been under the same circumstances." 
Poole was, besides, the valued friend of Rickman, the 
statistician and compiler of the first British census; of 
Thomas Wedgwood, whose career, beginning with the 
experiments in photography which are well known, was 
so unfortunately ended by incurable disease; of Sir 
Humphrey Davy, and of others of the most useful men 
of the time. Both personally and in his relations with 
those men who felt the revivifying influence of the French 

45 



46 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Revolution in England, he presents an interesting figure, 
and his memoir not only helps to complete our knowl- 
edge of Coleridge particularly, but exemplifies in a nota- 
ble way the characteristics of his age of reform. 

Poole is the more attractive because of the humbleness 
of the means by which he made his life remarkable. 
He was the son of a tanner in well-to-do circumstances, 
at Nether Stowey, in the region of the Quantock hills, 
and was bred to that business; but he had a thirst 
for knowledge which was perhaps encouraged in the 
home of his uncle, a more liberally-minded man than 
his father, where he found well-educated cousins, one of 
them going to Oxford. He could not have neglected 
his business very much, whatever his father may have 
thought, by his devotion to French and Latin, since 
he was chosen to be delegate to the Tanners' Trade 
Convention at London while still a youth, and made a 
favorable impression and brought away one valuable 
friendship. It may have been at this time and through 
the advice of the "great London tanner," Mr. Purkis, 
that he came under the influence of French opinions, 
which he imbibed sufficiently to alarm his Toryish cou- 
sins as well as the country neighborhood, by shaking the 
powder out of his hair. He was thought to be a demo- 
crat, and the word was at that time and place a thing 
to shudder at. How it was that he became acquainted 
with Coleridge, it is impossible to ascertain. There was 
a tradition that the two had met accidentally in a tav- 
ern, when the poet was in the army and Poole had meta- 
morphosed himself into a common workman. It seems 
to be believed that Poole did carry out that plan of 
becoming thoroughly versed in the details of the tanning 
trade and acquainted with the minds and habits of the 



THOMAS POOLE AND HIS FRIENDS 47 

workmen; but the time of this is uncertain. It is as 
a possible adventurer in the Pantisocratic scheme that 
we first find him connected with Coleridge. He de- 
scribes the plan in a letter to an inquiring friend, and 
this account is the most detailed of any yet published 
about this famous project of settlement on the banks of 
the Susquehannah: 

"Twelve gentlemen of good education and liberal principles 
are to embark with twelve ladies in April next. Previous to 
their leaving this country they are to have as much inter- 
course as possible, in order to ascertain each other's dis- 
positions, and firmly to settle every regulation for the gov- 
ernment of their future conduct. Their opinion was that 
they should ijx themselves at — I do not recollect the place, 
but somewhere in a delightful part of the new back settle- 
ments; that each man should labor two or three hours in a 
day, the produce of which labor would, they imagine, be 
more than sufficient to support the colony. As Adam Smith 
observes that there is not above one productive man in twenty, 
they argue that if each labored the twentieth part of the 
time, it would produce enough to satisfy their wants. The 
produce of their industry is to be laid up in common for the 
use of all; and a good library of books is to be collected, and 
their leisure hours to be spent in study, liberal discussions, 
and the education of their children. A system for the edu- 
cation of their children is laid down, for which, if this plan at 
all suits you, I must refer you to the authors of it. The 
regulations relating to the females strike them as the most 
difficult; whether the marriage contract shall be dissolved if 
agreeable to one or both parties, and many other circum- 
stances, are not yet determined. The employments of the 
women are to be the care of infant children and other occu- 
pations suited to their strength, at the same time the greatest 
attention is to be paid to the cultivation of their minds. 
Every one is to enjoy his own religious and political opinions, 
provided they do not encroach on the rules previously 
made, which rules, it is unnecessary to add, must in some 



48 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

measure be regulated by the laws of the State which includes 
the district in which they settle." 



Such was the scheme of colonization worked out by 
Coleridge and Southey, the latter of whom Poole de- 
scribes as "more violent in his principles than even Cole- 
ridge himself"; and he adds: "In Religion, shocking to 
say in a mere Boy as he is, I fear he wavers between 
Deism and Atheism." The cost to each undertaker was 
to be £125. But Poole, who was at this time twenty-nine 
years old, accompanied this information with very sound 
considerations as to the chimerical nature of the project, 
which is now interesting partly as an example of the 
French ferment, but mainly as a literary curiosity. 

The lifelong friendship of Poole and Coleridge began 
some months later, in the summer of 1794. The actual 
day when Coleridge and Southey visited him was long 
remembered in the neighborhood as that on which the 
news of the death of Robespierre reached the place. 
Poole was already a suspected democrat, and had been 
warned that the Government had an eye on his private 
correspondence, but he made light of it. The violent 
expressions of his two companions on this occasion were 
scandalous. It is reported that, Tom's cousin (the tall, 
fair-complexioned Oxford don) being present, one of 
them had said that "Robespierre was a ministering angel 
of mercy, sent to slay thousands that he might save 
millions"; and Southey in particular laid his head down 
upon his arms and exclaimed, "I had rather have heard 
of the death of my own father ! " But one must not rely 
on phrases handed down by tradition. It is certain 
that people were very much shocked, and in particular 
the fair-complexioned don, with powdered locks and 



THOMAS POOLE AND HIS FRIENDS 49 

precise attire, who recorded the occurrence, but not the 
words, in his Latin diary. "Uterque," he writes, "vero 
rabie Democratica quoad Politiam; et Infidelis quoad 
Religionem spectat, turpiter fervet. Ego maxime indig- 
nor" ; and after a few words more he concludes, "sed 
de talibus satis." The sisters of the Latinist, who was a 
most admirable man, were similarly indignant at "Cousin 
Tom" for entertaining such friends; and the situation 
was not improved when Coleridge, in the beginning of 
1797, the friendship with Poole having now strengthened 
and become most intimate, came to live in Stowey, 
where he passed what must have been the most agree- 
able year of his life. It was here that he com- 
posed the "Ancient Mariner." To the young lady 
cousins the poet, "with the brow of an angel and the 
mouth of a beast," as he describes himself, was only a 
bugbear, and he received from them scant respect; but 
perhaps, as the biographer suggests, Mrs. Coleridge and 
the baby helped to reconcile him with the humbler 
neighbors. It was different when Wordsworth and his 
sister, with the young child for which they were caring, 
took the Alfoxden House near by, also with Poole's aid 
and counsel. Stories were rife about them at once: "the 
profound seclusion in which they lived, the incompre- 
hensible nature of their occupations, their strange habit 
of frequenting out-of-the-way and untrodden spots, the 
very presence of an unexplained child that was no rela- 
tion to either of them" — such are the reasons assigned 
for that cloud of distrust which gathered about the poet 
and his sister. It was now that the Government spy 
was sent to watch them, and they were warned to leave 
at the expiration of their year's lease, by the direction of 
the lady, Mrs. St. Albyn, who owned the estates. It was 



So LITERARY MEMOIRS 

to no purpose, apparently, that Poole wrote to her a full 
explanation of the circumstances, and assured her of 
Wordsworth's character. Matters reached their pitch, 
however, when Thelwall came to visit Coleridge, and, 
tired of a life of persecution, also wished to settle in 
this favored locality. This was clearly impossible, and 
Coleridge wrote to remind him that Poole could not be 
asked to jeopardize further his reputation in the country 
side. 

The disturbed mind of the neighborhood, in view of 
the presence among them of a nest of democrats hatching 
they knew not what, was a passing matter. To Poole 
himself the companionship of Coleridge and Wordsworth 
meant an invigoration of his intellectual life which must 
have been a stimulus of no ordinary force. At the same 
time his practical sagacity was never once at fault. 
From the beginning the character of Coleridge declares 
itself as it is now well known, with all its excitability and 
impulsiveness, and that half-frantic weakness which 
marks so much of his correspondence. Some of these 
new letters would be incredible were it not that, unfortu- 
nately, there are too many others like them. Poole, 
however, discharged well his duty as the friend whom 
Coleridge always regarded as nearest and most faithful. 
He was constantly serviceable. It was he who devised 
the gift which was to be made annually from the pro- 
ceeds of £25 contributions by Coleridge's friends. 
Doubtless he had much to do with obtaining the Wedg- 
wood annuity of £150, which at the time seemed to 
insure a life undisturbed by financial anxieties; and in 
lesser matters he was not less active. On the other 
hand, Coleridge explains the nature of the bond which 
united them very plainly: "I used to feel myself more 



THOMAS POOLE AND HIS FRIENDS 51 

at home," he says, "in his great windy parlor than in 
my own cottage. We were well suited to each other — 
my animal spirits corrected his inclination to melan- 
choly; and there was something, both in his understand- 
ing and in his affections, so healthy and manly that my 
mind freshened in his company, and my ideas and habits 
of thinking acquired, day after day, more of substance 
and reality." As time went on, Poole, without lessen- 
ing his admiration for his friend's abilities, saw more 
plainly the grave nature of his defects. He followed 
him with good wishes and high hopes on his German 
tour, but the winter in Malta and the months after 
Coleridge's return must have sealed his judgment that 
nothing of fulfilment of the expectations of Coleridge's 
genius was now to be looked for. He was never slow 
to give him advice, and it was always sagacious; but 
advice was the last thing that Coleridge wanted. Poole 
did not believe that Coleridge's ills were real. It is 
perfectly plain that in the years during which Coleridge 
suffered physically, and was making attempts to regain 
health by this and that project of travel, Poole regarded 
him as hypochondriacal, and told him so plainly enough, 
if not in so many words. This probably occasioned in 
part the disagreement, the coolness, in fact, which arose 
between them at one time, and which is the blot on their 
friendship. Coleridge resented the opinion that his ail- 
ment sprang from mental rather than physical causes; 
and, when an incident occurred to acerbate this feeling, 
he broke out in a manner which Poole rightly regarded 
as "outrageous." Wordsworth had written to Poole, de- 
tailing Coleridge's situation, and asking if he could not 
provide £100, for him to go to the Azores. Poole re- 
plied to Coleridge directly, and excused himself, saying 



52 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

he was ready to contribute £20; and he concluded in the 
old strain: "Coleridge — God, I hope, will preserve you. 
It seems to me impossible to imagine that you would not 
be well if you could have a mind freely at ease. Make 
yourself that mind. Take from it — its two weak parts 
— its tendency to restlessness and its tendency to torpor, 
and it would make you great and happy. It would in 
a moment see what is right, and it would possess the 
power, and that steadily, to execute it." Poole was a 
man with many calls upon his purse, for his benevolence 
was marked, and at the time his affairs, as Coleridge 
knew, were in an unfavorable state; Coleridge, too, was 
then owing him £37. Yet Coleridge so far forgot himself 
as to remind Poole of the difference in their education, 
and to impute to him an illiberal spirit arising from his 
regard for money. "It is impossible that you should 
feel," he says, "as to pecuniary affairs, as Wordsworth 
or as I feel — or even as men greatly inferior to you in 
all other things that make man a noble being. But this 
I always knew and calculated upon, and have applied to 
you in my little difficulties when I could have procured 
the sums with far less pain to myself from persons less 
dear to me, only that I might not estrange you wholly 
from the outward and visible realities of my existence, 
my wants and sufferings"; and he ends with, "Let us 
for the future abstain from all pecuniary matters." He 
followed up this letter by others in the same strain, and 
refused to see anything "outrageous" in these remarks. 
The friendship survived the strain, much to Poole's 
credit; but the correspondence grew less constant, and 
finally ceased, except for a yearly bulletin from Mrs. 
Coleridge until her death. Poole continued, however, 
to be serviceable to the family, assisted Hartley through 



THOMAS POOLE AND HIS FRIENDS 53 

college, and was always ready to fulfill his early promises 
of help. It is clear enough, it is pleasant to add, that 
Coleridge felt that Poole had really been his friend of 
friends, and that Poole on his side retained undiminished, 
however he might regret Coleridge's fate, his old affec- 
tion for him. 

We have left but scanty space for the record of Poole's 
own life, which might well be thought better worth de- 
tailing than the history of that friendship to which prob- 
ably he owes his memoir. He was, as the biographer 
reminds us, a typical example of those Englishmen of 
his time who desired to make the most of themselves and 
live useful lives. He was, to begin with, fond of making 
and adopting improvements in his own business, which 
he conducted successfully until he retired from it, and 
at the same time he cultivated a large farm. In public 
affairs he had shown while still young a special interest 
in the condition of the working classes. The food riots, 
occasioned by the war, brought the subject very vividly 
to his attention, and he was directly engaged in the 
work of relief. We find him experimenting in ways of 
making cheap bread and in methods of planting wheat, 
and in later years deeply interested in the introduction 
of merino sheep into England. He built the village 
school, taught in it, and was eager to forward popular 
education. His cousin, John Poole, the young Oxford 
don, was the founder of the Enmore public school and 
a pioneer in the cause both by practical teaching and by 
means of his pen. Thomas Poole also founded the 
Female Friendly Society, for the purpose of assisting 
women in times of distress, and organized the savings 
bank. In brief, there was, it is said, no local charitable 
institution that he did not originate or support. This 



54 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

interest in the condition of the people was the occasion 
of his friendship with Rickman, and consequently of his 
only public service. The two, after having met, cor- 
responded on the subject of the Poor-Laws; and, an 
inquiry being shortly after authorized by Parliament, 
Rickman persuaded Poole to give some months of his 
time to the task of receiving and tabulating the returns. 
In this way, living in London, he was brought in useful 
contact with many public men. 

His interest in politics, both foreign and domestic, 
never ceased to be keen, and although his early opinions, 
which do not seem to have been extreme, were modified 
with the course of years, he was at heart and in practise 
a reformer to the end. He was enlisted with Clarkson 
against the slave trade, and was one of those men who 
would use no sugar because it was raised by slave labor. 
Whenever one comes on the public questions of that day 
in these pages, Poole is found to be not only on the 
right side, but thoroughly in earnest and laborious in 
the work. It was natural that he should end his life 
as the leading and most respected man in his community, 
the adviser in all local affairs, and the friend and "com- 
mon peacemaker," as he was called, of his neighbor- 
hood. His self-training intellectually, united with a 
capacity for fellowship, had made him the companion 
of many notable persons. He spoke French, and during 
his travels on the Continent in the year of the peace, he 
had the fortune to meet several of the distinguished 
men of the time; but such associations had not changed 
his original nature. He always affected a certain rus- 
ticity of manner; his voice was loud and disagreeable, 
made harsh by the constant use of snuff; there was a 
rough quality in him. When he was a county magis- 



THOMAS POOLE AND HIS FRIENDS 55 

trate and coming to the end of life, he would proclaim, 
in what is styled an uncompromising tone, "For my part, 
I am a plebeian. I am a tanner, you know, I am a 
tanner." Southey speaks of him as "clod-hopping over 
my feelings"; but in a more amiable moment he also 
says, "Torn Poole is not content to be your friend; he 
must be your saviour." It is noticeable, however, that 
he had also that gift of tenderness which sometimes goes 
with rough natures. He was an excellent nurse, and 
was quick to come in all times of domestic trouble and 
bereavement, and no one was more welcome. In his 
drawer, after his death, was found among his memen- 
toes a small packet labeled, "The hair of my poor shep- 
herd, who served me faithfully for twenty- three years"; 
it is a trifling thing, but nothing could be more signifi- 
cant. He never married, and he outlived several of his 
best friends, especially Coleridge, Davy, and Tom 
Wedgwood; but his home was a center of cheerfulness, 
and he was surrounded in his later years by young people 
who had experienced his perpetual kindness. He left 
no great thing behind him to preserve his memory — he 
was a man of his generation only; but at the end of 
these volumes the reader finds himself of one mind with 
those of his friends of whom Coleridge in his character of 
Poole says, "Not a man among them but would vote 
for leaving him as he is." It is not often that an humble 
life, with so much of the substance of virtue in it, gets 
itself written. 



THE DE QUINCEY FAMILY 

Dr. Japp is the apologist of De Quincey. The par- 
ticular attack is the doubt of De Quincey's veracity in 
the autobiographic details which he wove into his works. 
Some question of the Opium-Eater's truthfulness was 
early expressed, and Mr. George Saintsbury printed sus- 
picions of the same sort which lost none of their vexa- 
tiousness coming from his pen. Mainly in consequence of 
this critic's remarks, if one may judge from the constant 
reference to them, Dr. Japp and the representatives 
of De Quincey published the family correspondence. 
The exposure of private affairs, nine-tenths of which 
have no interest whatever to outsiders, is complete. 
The interior arrangements, both domestic and financial, 
are laid open, and in the letters of De Quincey's 
mother, two sisters, and two brothers every one is made 
welcome to a not very edifying story. 

The family was not a happy one. The mother was 
unable, apparently, to win the affection of the children, 
and they on their side were impatient of her discipline. 
Mrs. De Quincey was a woman of much formal propri- 
ety, attached to the Clapham sect in religious and moral 
sympathy. De Quincey himself draws a vivid picture 
of her as he remembers the impression she made on him 
in early years: 

"Figure to yourself a woman of admirable manners, in 
fact as much as any person I have ever known distinguished 
by ladylike tranquility and repose, and even by self-posses- 

57 



58 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

sion, but also freezing in excess. Austere she was to a degree 
which fitted her for the lady-president of rebellious nunneries. 
Rigid in her exactions of duty from those around her, but 
also firm herself; upright, sternly conscientious, munificent 
in her charities, pure-minded in so absolute a degree that 
you would have been tempted to call her 'holy' — she yet 
could not win hearts by the graciousness of her manner. . . . 
It is as good as a comedy in my feeling when I call back 
the characteristic scene which went on every morning of the 
year. All of us, for some years six, were marched off or 
carried off to a morning parade in my mother's dressing-room. 
As the mailcoaches go down daily in London to the inspector 
of mails, so we rolled out of the nursery at a signal given, 
and were minutely reviewed in succession. Were the lamps 
of our equipage clean and bright? Were the springs properly 
braced? Were the linchpins secured? When this inspection, 
which was no mere formality, had traveled from the front 
rank to the rear, when we were pronounced to be in proper 
trim, or, in the language of the guard, 'all right behind,' we 
were dismissed, but with two ceremonies that to us were mys- 
terious and allegorical — first, that our hair and faces were 
sprinkled with lavender water and milk of roses; secondly, 
that we received a kiss on the forehead." 

It is not to a son's credit to write thus of his mother; 
but the tone shows plainly the absence of any warmth 
of feeling, a perfect coldness and apathy of filial affec- 
tion. It is added that Mrs. De Quincey taught her 
children to undervalue themselves so that, says De Quin- 
cey, "we held it a point of filial duty to believe ourselves 
the very scum and refuse of the universe." And, to 
add the last anecdote that fills out this unfavorable pic- 
ture, it is related that a servant, on being asked why she 
did not appeal to the mistress, replied: "Speak to mis- 
tress! would I speak to a ghost?" 

Notwithstanding all this, it is plain enough that Mrs. 
De Quincey was a mother devoted to the welfare of her 



THE DE QUINCEY FAMILY 59 

children. She had the disadvantage of having guard- 
ians associated with her, one of whom, Dr. Hall, was 
certainly a most unfortunate choice. Mrs. Baird Smith, 
one of De Quincey's daughters, thinks that she was self- 
distrustful and sought advice from her friends, the Clap- 
ham people, and that the children felt this interference 
of strangers as a bar between them and their mother. 
Whatever was the reason, the result was that both 
Thomas and Richard ran away and suffered much hard- 
ship, and none of the others exhibit any attachment to 
the mother. On her side, however, we think none can 
read her letters without being impressed by her excellent 
qualities, and in particular, in later years, by her willing- 
ness to assist De Quincey and the rest to the utmost 
of her means. From the time he went to Oxford her 
purse was used for him, and after he had wasted his 
inheritance she gave him continually from her funds as 
much as was possible, though she insisted, with good 
sense, on keeping the capital intact and settling it on 
the grandchildren. She certainly lacked tact in appeal- 
ing to the children, and she spoke her mind freely about 
their faults, but not so harshly but that a grown per- 
son, making allowance for her religious belief, strongly 
colored with evangelicalism as it was, should have seen 
and honored the motives and feelings which prompted 
such criticism. Here is as unfavorable a passage as can 
be quoted, written on hearing and too readily believing 
that the education of De Quincey's daughters was be- 
ing neglected. She offers to pay the school bills, and then 
goes on as follows: 

"I have long been too certain that you were bringing up 
your sons in idleness, but hoping they were to be made 
scholars and their minds taught to work, I supposed they 



60 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

would be kept from falling necessarily into profligacy, and 
live by literature, but I know not where or what now to 
hope; and, O my son, if they are all brought up in idle 
ignorance, what but the worst can be expected? I am sure 
of this, that a Parent with your means who does this is 
utterly unworthy of children; but still in the present time 
where must the wages of this bad work fall the heaviest? In 
this time, bad as it is in many points, to bring up girls in idle 
ignorance is only to make them victims, not prepared to take 
their place among industrious people laboring for bread, yet 
too ignorant to be received elsewhere! I cannot express my 
feelings as I ought; I can only proffer my help; and if you 
can possibly be angry to hear the truth, I too well remember 
what you said touching my respect for the lowly virtues to 
be surprised, though not shaken in my well-assured con- 
victions." 

This is an extreme instance of fault-finding, and there 
is nothing in it that any one can object to, except the 
readiness to believe that De Quincey was so derelict in 
his parental duty; and it is allowed that as respects the 
girls there was some color for the censure. Perhaps 
another passage is not amiss as representing his mother's 
tone in his boyhood. She writes to him at the Man- 
chester Grammar School as follows: 

"I plainly perceive that you have exalted one, and that 
the most dangerous faculty of the mind, the imagination, 
over all the rest; but it will desolate your life and hopes, if 
it be not restrained and brought under religious government; 
it may then be turned to the use it was assuredly given for, 
in the pursuit of any profession, and be nobly used in the 
service of your Maker. In a worldly sense, without you 
bring this busy, restless power into submission to reason and 
judgment, you are undone; you are now carried away, wholly 
blinded by the bewildering light of your fancy, and that 
you may never see clearer your reading is all of a sort to 
weaken your mental optics." 



THE DE QUINCEY FAMILY 61 

These passages serve for illustration of Mrs. De 
Quincey's character and temperament, but they really do 
injustice to her since they do not disclose the continual 
anxiety she felt for her children, and her serviceableness 
to them practically after they grew up. She repelled 
them by her principles, too narrowly held and too rigidly 
enforced; she did not win their trust, and appeal to her 
against what they thought wrong in their school-life ap- 
pears not merely to have been useless, but to have 
brought only her strongly expressed displeasure on them 
as unruly and disobedient. And these errors of con- 
duct cost her their affection. It was a full price to pay, 
and justice may now be done to her more admirable 
traits of fidelity, self-sacrifice, and devotion to her par- 
ental duty. 

Richard was the child who suffered most from the 
defects in his guardianship. He ran away from school 
because he was flogged, and, on being returned and 
flogged for this offense, he ran away a second time, 
joined a merchant ship as cabin boy, was captured by 
pirates on the South American coast, escaped and made 
one of the storming party at Montevideo, and so dis- 
tinguished himself that he was at once rated a midship- 
man by the English admiral. He was in the action at 
Copenhagen, taken prisoner by the Danes, and after- 
wards exchanged, on which occasion he made himself 
known to his family. They questioned his identity at 
first, as he refused to meet them personally, but he 
afterwards satisfied their doubts, and was in pleasant 
intercourse with them till he met an early and unknown 
death in Jamaica on a hunting excursion. He was twice 
in England during his wanderings and was in want, but 
he so feared his guardians that he kept himself obscure; 



62 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

nor did he finally disclose himself till he was safely past 
twenty-one years of age. This persistence of Richard in 
what must have been a hard and unwelcome life is the 
strongest proof of the severity and lack of sympathy he 
felt in his natural friends, and, indeed, his feelings 
towards his guardians must have amounted to hatred. 
In his letters he shows a pleasant disposition and the 
intellectual tastes which characterized the family, and 
he is altogether the most attractive of them. The letters 
of the sisters are not of any special interest except as 
they carry on the family story; and Henry, the last 
brother, seems to have been rather a weakling. 

The literary part of the Memorials is considerable in 
bulk and separable from the family portion. Its prin- 
ciple feature is the collection of letters from Dorothy 
Wordsworth to De Quincey. These are admirable, and 
sufficient in charm and interest to give the volumes 
permanent value in literature. They describe, in the 
rapid, natural, and feminine way that belonged to their 
author's pen, the interior of the Wordsworth household; 
and as De Quincey was especially interested in the chil- 
dren, they are full of anecdotes and news about the little 
ones, who were as fond of De Quincey as he of them. 
Nothing, perhaps, is more childishly delightful than 
"Johnny's" interpolation into his evening prayer for his 
"good friends" — "Mr. De Quincey is one of my 
friends"; but there are several incidents of the sort. 
There is, of course, much besides the children's affairs — 
about the De Quincey cottage, then in the furnishing, the 
Green family lost in the snow, the doings of Coleridge, 
Wordsworth's verse-writing, Jeffrey's reviews, and es- 
pecially the Convention of Cintra pamphlet which De 
Quincey was seeing through the press. Wordsworth 



THE DE QUINCEY FAMILY 63 

was somewhat apprehensive of being prosecuted for this 
publication, and Dorothy writes: 

"William still continues to haunt himself with fancies 
about Newgate and Dorchester or some other gaol, but as 
his mind clings to the gloomy, Newgate is his favorite theme. 
We, however, have no fears; for even if the words be action- 
able (which I cannot but think they are not), in these times 
they would not dare inflict such a punishment." 

We should mention also two admirable letters of 
Wordsworth to De Quincey before meeting him, very 
characteristic and kind, and a letter of Coleridge to 
De Quincey when the latter asked repayment of some 
loans, in which Coleridge appears to advantage in the 
sincere expression of feelings honorable to him. The 
correspondence with Professor Wilson sheds light upon 
the financial relations of De Quincey with himself, both 
being borrowers, and exhibits the former's indulgence 
and friendship under trying circumstances. The cor- 
respondence of Lord Altamont abundantly justifies all 
that De Quincey said of his association with the family, 
and shows the peer's own character in a pleasant light. 

The net result of this collection is to sustain De Quin- 
cey's accuracy of statement, and so far to benefit his 
reputation. At all points where he is tested by these 
documents he is found correct. At the same time, the 
history of the family is so exhibited as to give better 
opportunities for judging of his position in early life, 
and of how they discharged their obligations to him 
after he fell into misfortune. It is perhaps well to have 
the subject cleared up. It does not appear to us that, 
all things considered, he was illiberally treated. He 
took his career into his own hands with more or less 
excuse, but he did not prosper in the undertaking. As 



64 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

soon as he came into his inheritance, he usea it, in part 
generously, but altogether foolishly, and soon it was 
gone. He wrote a long and minute history of this worldly 
failure, and in it he discusses his hopes and the reasons 
of his various decisions. One passage illustrates his esti- 
mate of himself: 

"I hoped, and have every year hoped with better grounds, 
that (if I should be blessed with life sufficient) I should 
accomplish a great revolution in the intellectual condition of 
the world. That I should, both as one cause and one effect 
of that revolution, place education upon a new footing through- 
out all civilized nations, was but one part of this revolution; 
it was also but a part (though it may seem singly more than 
enough for a whole) to be the first founder of true philosophy; 
and it was no more than a part that I hoped to be the re- 
establisher in England (with great accessions) of mathe- 
matics." 

This was apparently written in 1818, in De Quincey's 
thirty-third year. That he formed such hopes, and re- 
tained them so long, shows the lack of judgment with 
respect to himself and his own life which characterized 
him. He had already fallen under the opium habit. He 
excused himself from ordinary labor in the professions 
on the ground of these great aims, and the fact was that 
most of what he really accomplished was piecemeal work 
done for the magazines to get money. His mother had 
about £13,000, which she determined to hand down to 
her grandchildren, i. e., De Quincey's children, but she 
assisted him out of the income; and in this her decision 
must commend itself to a practical mind. His uncle in 
India also assisted him at times, but, after his retire- 
ment on a reduced allowance of perhaps £700 a year, 
seems to have found that sum no more than sufficient for 



THE DE QUINCEY FAMILY 65 

his bachelor tastes. It cannot be made out that De 
Quincey did not receive as much from the family estate 
as was fairly to be given to him. The reproach that 
they were indifferent to his welfare and practically de- 
serted him has no foundation in the light of these Mem- 
orials. Altogether, the story seems more honorable to 
his mother than to himself, in substance, though she 
cannot be wholly freed from responsibility for errors 
of judgment, and for the cold demeanor in early days 
which made the youth of the boys so unhappy both in 
itself and in its results. 



EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON 

Sentimentality, under some one of its many forms, 
is ever ready to fasten on literatures that have become 
polished, and on social coteries in whose culture the 
intellectual mode has any part; for there is a fashion 
in gentlemen's thoughts as in their cravats and waist- 
coats — a ruling theory, a proper temper of mind, an 
established canon of criticism, assented to like a code 
of manners as a basis whereon the half-savage but gre- 
garious animal, man, may safely converse. And just 
as there is one clique that dresses the body stylishly 
for the parlor, there is another that clothes the mind 
conventionally for the dinner table. In London, during 
the years just before the Reform Bill, this species of 
the higher etiquette was languishingly romantic, as later 
it was languishingly picturesque; it was then like a mys- 
tery of the illuminated, the peculiar faith, the bon ton, 
of society. Byron was its high priest, Bulwer its 
neophyte, and, to carry out the figure, the young Dis- 
raeli its fanatic. Then the gilded youth had each out- 
lived a passion, a crime, and an ambition, and as ocular 
proof thereof wore the cast garments of Lara, the shoon 
and scallop-shell of Harold; the maids, old and young, 
sighed for blighted affections in preference to happy 
love, and after dinner became lachrymose over the songs 
of Moore in the drawing-room. Now that Gladstone 
governs where Melbourne lolled, it seems a worm-eaten, 
theatrical mask, whose best use in history was to be the 

6 7 



68 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

butt of Thackeray's banter. "What sort of a novel 
would Lady Caroline Lamb perpetrate to-day?" one in- 
voluntarily asks himself, as he reads of her sickly flirta- 
tions with the young-mannish Bulwer who was proud 
one day to wear Byron's ring, the public gyve of her 
lovers and chief sign of her favor, and sullen the next 
at finding the romance vapor away in a fiasco. In such 
hothouse society the precocious novelist grew up and 
tired, and early arrived at the cynicism that tempered 
his worldly wit, as well as at the knowledge of surfaces 
that gave vraisemblance and success to "Pelham." All 
this — the artificiality, insincerity, affectation, not of 
manners, but of feeling, in a word the sentimentality of 
the fashionable coteries affected by literature — must 
be kept in mind in order to understand Bulwer's tempta- 
tions, his brilliant entrance on his long career, and es- 
pecially the sterling qualities of his mind and heart. 

His autobiography, with its supplementary letters, 
notes, fragments of novels, begins, as is common since 
the discovery of the principle of heredity, at the root of 
the genealogical tree. The author had much of the 
pride of race, and he has gathered some entertainment 
out of his trunkful of old papers; but usually the family 
records are of more interest to himself than to his 
readers, though all the latter, by a curious lapse of his 
son's pen, are styled "his posterity." His material 
grandfather, the omnivorous, silent scholar, who in Dr. 
Parr's opinion was the first Latinist of the times, and 
second only to Porson in Greek and to Sir William Jones 
in Oriental tongues, was really worth description; for 
there were strong traits and fine humorous contrasts in 
the old bookworm, who, indeed, once attempted original- 
ity by beginning a drama in Hebrew, but abandoned the 



EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON 69 

muse in disgust because he could not find Jews suffi- 
ciently versed in their own language to act in it, and at 
last, wearied with buried lore, "took the daughter of the 
vine to spouse" in the shape of an immense collection 
of the Spanish romances of chivalry. In the case of 
other ancestors, and especially in his mother's love af- 
fairs, Bulwer's own narrative is garrulous and in bad 
taste. Of himself he says but little, although he has 
written a good-sized book by the time he reaches his 
twenty-third year, when the autobiography stops. 

One noticeable thing in this early period is that he 
was brought up by women. His father's death, when 
he was still a young child, left him a mother's boy, and 
her influence was the greater over him because he was 
removed from the company of his two brothers, and 
was never sent to a public school. He felt toward her 
a deep and grateful affection; but some part of his dis- 
pleasing peculiarities were probably due to this early 
seclusion from the intimate observation of men and the 
unrestrained criticism of the Etonians. He was a pre- 
cocious child, but his mother was not a Cornelia. Obe- 
dience to parents was, in her creed, the first command- 
ment — upon it, as on a rock, two lovers and the happi- 
ness of her life had gone to pieces; the second was like 
unto it — regard for the world, respectability. Of her 
mental caliber here is an illustration, and perhaps it is 
also a straw to show from what quarter the wind blew 
in the matter of Bulwer's foppishness: "The powdered 
locks; the double-breasted white waistcoat, with the 
muslin cravat in great bows, rising over a delicate pink 
silk kerchief, carelessly folded to answer the purpose of 
our modern undervest; the top-boots, shrunk half-way 
down the calf; and the broad-brimmed hat, set with 



7 o LITERARY MEMOIRS 

easy impertinence on one side the head — 'that,' said 
my poor mother, after finishing her description, 'that 
is what I call being well dressed! ' " When Bulwer was 
advanced so far in childhood as to ask this guardian 
mother, "Pray, mamma, are you not sometimes over- 
come by the sense of your own identity?" she answered, 
"It is high time you should go to school, Teddy"; and, 
consequently, being nine years old, he went to Fulham, 
and was so shocked and so homesick that he was with- 
drawn in a fortnight, and after that was sent to other 
schools, which he left successively, as being too clever, 
too impetuous, or what not, until at one of these hos- 
telries of learning he had his first, and it seems his last, 
love affair. The story is very dimly told: a youth of 
seventeen, a girl slightly older, walks in the green se- 
questered meadows by the Brent, a passionate parting, 
and then three years of repulsive marriage for the girl, 
with death at the end, and for the boy a touch of imagi- 
native melancholy, growing deeper and tenderer as the 
man found he had missed wedded happiness — this is 
all; but from the frequency and the feeling with which 
Bulwer introduced the story alike into his earliest and 
latest novels, it was clearly one of the marked and lasting 
experiences of his life. 

From school to Cambridge was only a matter of 
routine; and from Cambridge, where he had made a 
mark as a debater and poet beside Praed (who was then 
to the university what Byron was to the world), he 
naturally went to Paris and authorship, with an adven- 
ture in gypsy life, a flirtation with Lady Caroline, and 
much perfumed correspondence, half gallant, half lite- 
rary, for incidents by the way. He had already pub- 
lished very early some volumes of imitative verse, and 



EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON 71 

thereby had occasioned a flattering exchange of letters 
with Dr. Parr, in one of which that learned man indites 
thus wondrously to the versifier of eighteen: "Although 
in our politics we differ widely, yet I feel a pure, and I 
had almost said a holy, satisfaction in contemplating 
the moral properties of your mind." One queries 
whether or not the good old man felt the same "holy 
satisfaction" when he read "Falkland," the first result of 
these "moral properties" in literature. Pelham fol- 
lowed, and laid the foundation of Bulwer's fame. He 
married, published three more novels, became editor of 
the "New Monthly," and returned to the Reform Parli- 
ament. At this point, in May 1831, when he was twenty- 
eight years old, the present installment of the work closes. 
Before the reader has advanced far, he perceives that 
the Earl of Lytton has invented a new scheme for writing 
biography, and, if it can be kept up to a certain level 
of accomplishment, a highly entertaining one. In his 
lifetime Bulwer was thought to be his own hero, and 
with this assumption his son so far agrees as to assert 
that he used his own experiences very patently in 
his fictions; but Bulwer probably did not foresee the 
ease with which the process could be reversed, and his 
novels turned into a biography by a copious use of his 
fragmentary manuscripts. This seems to be the pur- 
pose of his son. Bulwer is set before the world in the 
midst of the society in which he lived, the manners and 
characters of it being painted by his own hand, while his 
own part of hero — Lionel Hastings, De Lindsay, Glen- 
allan, Greville — when not sufficiently defined by itself, 
is elucidated by letters or other ordinary biographical 
material. In this way the work gains merely as a story 
through Bulwer's really fine literary faculty; and he him- 



7 2 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

self gains as a man through the judicious and timely dis- 
closures and comments of his son. He remains the witty 
and brilliant man of the world, as he expressed himself 
in his characters, and he becomes in addition a more 
estimable man than he has been hitherto regarded. His 
conduct toward his mother, who violently opposed his 
marriage, and entirely broke with him on account of it, 
thereby depriving him of her pecuniary resources, on 
which he was practically dependent, was highly honorable. 
He engaged himself because he thought his future wife's 
affections too deeply interested to be rejected, and he 
married with a full knowledge of the distressing circum- 
stances of alienation from his mother and of limited 
means in his household which would supervene; after he 
had thus done what he thought was his duty — for his 
passions were apparently not strongly aroused — he left 
no manly means untried to obtain reconciliation; and 
when that was at last arranged, he refused for a long 
time the money which his mother would have allowed 
him, because he felt that such an obligation was sub- 
ject to misconception. Throughout the affair the con- 
sideration of loss or gain of property seems not to have 
weighed in his mind. He gains, too, by the mere rev- 
elation of the industry with which, as his biographer 
puts it, he fed the waters of oblivion through many ob- 
scure channels. Incessant labor, downright hard work, 
was involved in composing the hundreds of anonymous 
articles, by means of which he made enough money to 
pay his way, while still much under thirty, and living 
at such a high rate that the income of the four thousand 
pounds he owned was but a slight help. He had always 
been diligent; his boyish note-books show an active and 
wide curiosity about institutions, politics, and history, 



EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON 73 

as well as society. Something of his grandfather's 
polyglot spirit had descended on him, for what his son 
says is quite true: "Certainly no other novelist of my 
father's own age and country has bestowed upon the en- 
richment and elevation of his art anything like the same 
opulence of literary knowledge." The novels themselves 
are not better than those of his contemporaries on this 
account, but the man himself is more highly accredited. 
One is glad that Thackeray withdrew with frank apology 
his satire in "Fraser's," as being written under an errone- 
ous idea of the author's character. 

Unfortunately, Bulwer's defects were those most easily 
perceived and most exposed to the ridicule of sensible 
men; and, besides, his youthful judgment was always 
good. He himself, in later days, suppressed "Falkland" 
as liable to have an immoral tendency, while still dis- 
avowing any immoral motive in its composition. "Paul 
Clifford," it seems, was meant to help on reform in the 
penal code and in prison discipline. "Pelham" was mainly 
satirical, and intended to work against the Byronic ideal. 
Such assertions will surprise some readers, for certainly 
it is not any ethical purpose that gives life to his novels; 
but (to confine our remarks to "Pelham") the precocious 
knowledge of the world, the wit, the cynicism of the first 
disillusionment — this is the secret of their attraction. 
It is, perhaps, more pleasing to learn of the moral aim 
of an author when it would not be easily discovered 
except by himself. Bulwer plainly considered that he 
did something of consequence in rendering antiquated 
the sentimental fashion then prevalent, of which we have 
said he was the neophyte. As sometimes happens, the 
neophyte apostatized. He could not, however, quite free 
himself from the taint of the school in which he was 



74 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

bred, as easily recognizable in these fresh, youthful 
manuscripts as in the novels of his first period. One 
of these fragments, "De Lindsay," was printed years ago, 
in 1832, in "The Ambitious Student," a fact of which the 
Earl of Lytton seems ignorant; at least, he publishes 
it as if for the first time. In themselves these literary 
remains add nothing, of course, to Bulwer's accomplish- 
ment; the libraries will have more of the same old 
piece, that is all. Nor, however much more highly 
Bulwer's character is rated for sense, manliness, intellec- 
tual vigor, and moral purpose, can it be granted that his 
early novels are substantially excellent. Even by their 
satire, by their very repulsion from the people they criti- 
cise, they are still essentially bound up with that society, 
and share in the affectations, hollowness, morbid and 
forced feeling, that characterized the literary age which 
Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot have made so 
remote from the present. Bulwer was in some respects 
of a finer strain than his companions, but he could not 
escape from among them. 



THE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR HENRY 
TAYLOR 

There are few literary pleasures greater tnan to read 
the familiar correspondence of men of intellectual culti- 
vation; and when, as in the case of Sir Henry Taylor, 
it extends over a long life, and has outlooks upon several 
eminent groups in both politics and literature, one may 
expect this pleasure in an unusual degree. Taylor was 
a hard-working man in the colonial office all his life; 
he wrote, beside other poetical works, a drama, "Philip 
van Arteveldt," which is thought to be one of the best 
plays of the century, and has had a continuous sale for 
fifty years; and his social position allowed him to see 
much of distinguished persons. The best of his life has 
been already made public in his "Autobiography," to 
which the present volume is a pendant, but by no means a 
superfluous one. It is concerned more with others than 
with himself. He entered life with the young men of whom 
Mill and Spedding were the most intellectual, and his 
friendship with the latter was lifelong. His own temper- 
ament shared rather the seriousness and sound judg- 
ment of such companions than the traditional enthusiasm 
and spirituality of the poetic character. In youth he 
suffered from those irrational depressions which vex men 
of nervous organization, and of these we get some im- 
pressions by way of reminiscence when he visited the 
country where he passed those days. He speaks, late 
in life, of having lost the sense of nervous enjoyment 

75 



76 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

which he felt in the beginning of his poetic career. 
Were it not for such touches as these, here and there in 
the pages, we should hardly see the poet in him at all. 
On the other hand, his mind was constitutionally prac- 
tical, even skeptical, slow to accept and slower to be 
fired; he says, in one of his earlier letters, that he never 
had a devotional feeling, and he betrays no sign of one 
in his later utterances. It was a singular mind, sympa- 
thetic with the political economists and the business of 
administration in which he was engaged, and, at the 
other extreme, delighting in Wordsworth. The two ele- 
ments, the intellectual and the literary, were admirably 
blended, and the result was an elevated if not a great 
life, and one of remarkable harmony within itself. In 
one place, he comments on finding himself more an ob- 
server of nature, perhaps from being less occupied with 
thoughts, that he used "to love poetry for its own sake, 
but nature for the sake of poetry"; and this shows that 
his start was rather in a literary impulse than in an 
inspiration. Then, too, the daily work at the desk must 
have had its effect, and he notes that his strength was 
thus regularly too much diverted to allow of writing 
poetry, which he calls one of the most exciting and ex- 
hausting of pleasures. He could not always command 
that leisure, sense of solitude, hope, and high opinion of 
his powers which he enumerates as the necessities of 
poetic production. More than all, he came late to the 
practice of the art; he wrote slowly and with much labor 
of thought; and though his work has taken a very re- 
spectable rank, one gets the impression that the poetic 
spark in him smouldered rather than burned. But it 
was not necessary that he should be a great poet, and, 
his nature was too capacious to let him be a poet of the 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR 77 

second rank; he was rather a remarkable type of the 
intellectual man, with the soundest moral qualities in the 
exercise of his mind, and it is for this that he is inter- 
esting. 

The first group with which he was brought in con- 
tact was that of Wordsworth and Southey and some of 
their friends. He occasionally met both of these men, 
and through Miss Fenwick, with whom he was inti- 
mate, he had nearer views. He presents Wordsworth, 
on his visits to London, on his most amiable side, and 
really makes him attractive; but Miss Fenwick's letters 
are the more interesting. She bears testimony to Words- 
worth's emotional nature, which may have some bearing 
on his excuse that he did not write love-poems because 
they would have been too passionate. "What strange 
workings are there in his great mind, and how fearfully 
strong are all his feelings and affections ! If his intellect 
had been less powerful, they must have destroyed him 
long ago; but even in the midst of his strongest emo- 
tions his attention may be attracted to some intellec- 
tual speculation, or his imagination excited by some of 
those external objects which have such influence over 
him; and his feelings subside like the feelings of a child, 
and he will go out and compose some beautiful sonnet." 
There are traits enough mentioned that are well known 
— his self-confidence, heaviness, delight in household 
praise, an old man's vanity; but as Miss Fenwick never 
loses the attitude of admiration, there is nothing ill- 
natured in such confessions. Crabb Robinson was with 
the family, and she deprecates his criticism in advance. 
She has a bit of bright portraiture of him: "I really like 
him very well, and never cease wondering how he has 
managed to preserve so much kindliness and courtesy in 



78 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

his bachelor state. He and old Wishaw are the only excep- 
tions I have met with to the tendency it has to deaden 
all love but self-love; but these two men seem both to 
love themselves and to make others love them. I re- 
member making out to my own satisfaction that Wishaw 
preserved his benevolence through the want of his leg — 
a want that made him feel his dependence on his fellow- 
creatures, while it called forth their sympathy and kind- 
ness, and all those little attentions which cultivate affec- 
tion both in the giver and receiver of them; and thus I 
imagined that the heart of old Wishaw was kept humble, 
grateful, and loving. But Crabb Robinson ... I 
thought, the other day, when I was contemplating him 
while he was asleep (he always sleeps when he is not 
talking), that his ugliness had done that for him which 
the want of a leg had done for old Wishaw: it was great 
enough to excite compassion and kindness, which awak- 
ened his affections as well, perhaps, as a wife and chil- 
dren would have done, and made him the kind, service- 
able creature he is." 

Taylor's sketches of Wordsworth naturally have not 
the freshness that belongs to reminiscences of men who 
have been less frequently described, but they have the 
merit of directness. He reports him in London as "mix- 
ing with all manner of men and delighting in various 
women, for he says his passion has always been for the 
society of women"; and Lockhart is quoted as saying 
that when Wordsworth met Jeffrey for the first time there 
the poet "played the part of a man of the world to per- 
fection, much better than the smaller man, and did not 
appear to be conscious of anything having taken place 
between them before." Taylor himself describes the 
old poet as "one of the most extraordinary human phe- 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR 79 

nomena that one could have in the house. He has the 
simplicity and helplessness of a child in regard to the 
little transactions of life; and whilst he is being directed 
and dealt with in regard to these, he keeps tumbling out 
the highest and deepest thoughts that the mind of man 
can reach, in a stream of discourse, which is so oddly 
broken by the little hitches and interruptions of common 
life that we admire and laugh at him by turns. Every- 
thing that comes into his mind comes out — weakness or 
strength, affection or vanities." But this is the Words- 
worth that the biographies all know. 

Of other men of the time there are here and there 
a few glimpses, sometimes given with satirical humor. 
This is how Sadler looked at a dinner with Southey: "He 
talked slowly, clumsily, and continually; and when he 
stumbled in his talk and broke down, he got slowly up 
again and tried to do better, without appearing to be 
sensible that anything awkward had happened to him, or 
that everybody had hoped and expected that the break- 
down would finish him. After tea, however, he got 
warmer and more flexible in his discourse, and at the same 
time not so hopelessly continuous, and seemed as if at 
times he might be agreeable, and at other times silent." 
There is, too, a biting characterization of "my Lord 
Jeffrey," in whose case, of course, Taylor was not with- 
out disturbing remembrance of what the critic had been 
to Wordsworth; but he thought him worth seeing, "in 
order to understand by what small springs mankind may 
be moved from time to time. There came from him, 
with a sort of dribbling fluency, the very mince-meat of 
small talk, with just such a seasoning of cleverness as 
might serve to give it an air of pretension." He com- 
pares Wilson — "a jolly, fair-haired ruffian, full of fire 



80 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

and talent, big and burly, and at the same time wild and 
animated" — to O'Connell, and remarks that he had 
"never seen two men, each striking in himself, whose ap- 
pearance bore so much the same moral stamp." Of 
Southey nothing remarkable is recorded; but the rela- 
tions between him and Taylor were full of respect upon 
both sides, and there are some letters of advice from the 
younger to the older man, in which there is admirable 
sense for all literary men who criticise public affairs. 
His distinction between the different degrees of respons- 
ibility generated by the duty of writing and that of act- 
ing upon subjects of public concern is most important, 
and his criticism on Southey's style, that "contempt, if 
it is to be believed to be genuine, must be, not expressed, 
but betrayed," is a convenient epigram for a polemical 
writer to keep always about him. But of all this earlier 
circle the most attractive figure is certainly that of Miss 
Fenwick, whose virtues were of that kind which too 
seldom sees the light. Her character, however, is felt 
rather than observed; there is no portrait of her in these 
letters, but very much is suggested, and one sees her 
chiefly by the reflection of her personality from the es- 
teem and affection of Taylor and Aubrey de Vere. The 
latter pays a tribute to her, at the time of her death, 
in a letter to Taylor, which is the most humane in the 
whole series. On an earlier page he had said that her 
moral nature was greater than Wordsworth's, and here 
he speaks of her with such affection and sensitiveness to 
the unhappiness of her life, and in so pure a religious 
spirit, as to bring home to the reader the memory of a 
high nature. 

To come to Taylor's own contemporaries, none of them 
who contribute letters to this volume impresses one more 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR 81 

pleasantly than De Vere. He was a lifelong friend and 
a poet besides, and he expressed himself frankly, and 
often with fullness, in his correspondence. He was the 
only one, Taylor confides to him, who thought as highly 
of the latter's verses as he did himself, and there was 
a good deal of poetic talk between them upon each other's 
work. De Vere's mind is subtle, and yet one that looks 
at things in the mass and as a whole ; not that he general- 
izes, but he is continuous, a seeker after unity and com- 
prehensiveness at once. Taylor says of him that his life 
was a soliloquy; certainly his thoughts have the charac- 
teristics of a mind working in solitude and largely within 
itself. This gives distinction to his letters, and the extraor- 
dinary refinement of his nature adds a grace which is 
never absent, and often comes upon one in some un- 
expected word, some minor thought, of the beauty of 
which the writer is unconscious. It is something more, 
however, that we obtain here a few personal glimpses 
of him. In one place we find him "an efficient mob- 
orator." It was during the Irish disturbances of 1847. 
"The troops came to attack a mob of several thousands, 
and, finding that they were in Aubrey's hands, who had 
stopped them and was making a speech from the top of a 
wall, the officer in command very wisely took away the 
troops, and Aubrey brought them to reason, and per- 
suaded them to give up their enterprise and disperse." 
At another time he had an adventure with some men who 
came to kill a steward whom he had refused to dismiss, 
and in this case, too, "his invariable self-possession" stood 
him in good stead; but his knowledge of the people and 
their knowledge of him seem to have been the cause of 
his success in dealing with them. In other passages we 
find him winning a good word from Carlyle, after the 



82 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

battle between them (Carlyle being "furiously and ex- 
travagantly irreverent") was over; and in general, light- 
ness of heart goes with his serious mind and kind manner. 
But such a man is best seen in his own words, though 
one will readily understand the feeling that there is a 
kind of privacy in this portion of the correspondence, 
an intimacy with a living man, which sometimes rebukes 
observation. 

The friendship between the two poets imparts a more 
personal element than is elsewhere to be found in the 
volume, except where Taylor writes of his own youth- 
ful days, 

"Under the shade of melancholy boughs," 

to his wife. We feel this closeness when De Vere speaks 
of his "vexation at Alice's getting ill as the carriage 
wound up the steep hill to Perugia, and the strange 
touch of grief I felt at observing for the first time what 
looked like a solid tress of gray in your hair, as you 
stood before me at church in Naples." For the spirit 
of this friendship we leave the reader to search in what 
will not prove the least valuable portion of this collec- 
tion; but before leaving the subject let us quote a short 
passage from De Vere's own retrospect: "Although there 
is a melancholy about the past, still the best scenes it 
presents to our memory seem to me presented even more 
to one's hope. They are less records of what was than 
pledges of what may be, and therefore must be in that 
far future that alone makes either present or past intel- 
ligible. One knows, looking back on them, that some- 
how they were not all that they seem to have been; or 
rather that, though they were all, and more than all, 
yet they were not either felt aright or understood aright 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR 83 

at the moment." We must find space, too, for De 
Vere's account of Tennyson's conservatism: " 'You are 
quite a conservative/ I said to him, one day. He re- 
plied, 'I believe in progress, and would conserve the 
hopes of men.'" This was in 1848, and Tennyson was 
also saying in very good British, "Let us not see a 
French soldier land on the English shores, or I will tear 
him limb from limb." The occasional violence of the 
Laureate's prose, however, is not a new thing in our 
anecdotes. 

There is a good deal, in one way and another, about 
Carlyle, the best being Taylor's remark a propos of Fred- 
erick: "The defect of Carlyle's book is one that belongs 
to the author, and which I once ventured to mention 
to him — that he does not know the difference between 
right and wrong." Some years before, in 1845, he made 
a happy quotation with regard to Carlyle's style: "His 
light comes in flashes, and 

'Before a man hath time to say "Behold!" 
The jaws of darkness do devour it up' ; " 

and he comments on the general subject of Carlyle's 
teaching: "I suppose that it will generally be found that 
when a man quarrels with all the world for not giving an 
intelligible account of the ways of Providence, it is be- 
cause he is much perplexed at them himself." Later, 
in 1848, he says: "Less instructive talk I never listened 
to from any man who had read and attempted to think. 
His opinions are the most groundless and senseless 
opinions that it is possible to utter. ... I think it 
is the great desire to have opinions and the incapacity 
to form them which keeps his mind in a constant struggle, 



84 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

and gives it over to every kind of extravagance. Taylor 
never formed a more favorable opinion. In 1868 he 
compares him to a a Puritan of the seventeenth century 
— that is, in his nature and character of mind (not, of 
course, in his creed, if he has one); a man who re- 
nounces argument and reasoning which every other intel- 
lectual man of the time thinks it necessary to stand 
upon, and trusts to visions and insights." Upon Carlyle, 
Aubrey de Vere, too, has a good sentence with regard 
to the democrats not being very angry with him: "The 
Revolutionary people readily forgive his phrases in praise 
of despotic rule, just as the Whigs forgave Moore for 
his Irish patriotism, when they found he was contented 
to hang his harp on the orange-trees in the conserva- 
tories at Holland Park. Carlyle's admirers feel that his 
works are at the Revolutionary side." 

Sir James Stephens, who took the interest of an 
elderly man in Taylor, is very welcome whenever he 
appears in the correspondence; and so is James Sped- 
ding, though he was not a good letter-writer. Taylor 
characterizes the latter's mind very sharply, in one 
place. He is speaking of Spedding's possible influence 
in causing Tennyson's revolt from Gladstone. "There 
is in it [his mind], however, a leaning to the contro- 
versial, which involves, perhaps, some tincture of the 
spirit of contradiction. If left to himself, he will con- 
tradict himself, till he works himself into just thinking 
and comes to a correct conclusion. But if a man like 
Gladstone is positive and absolute and vehement, and all 
on one side, the spirit will lift up its head and hiss like 
a serpent that is trodden on." In connection with this, 
and in general with the place Gladstone occupies in the 
politics at the end of the volume, it is amusing to turn 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR 85 

back to the year 1839, and find Taylor writing of him, 
"Two wants, however, may lie across his political ca- 
reer — want of robust health and want of flexibility." 
Old Lord Ashburton is very keenly drawn, especially in 
regard to his power of seeing all sides of a question, so 
that he was said to be notorious for convincing every- 
body in the House of Commons but himself, for he "gen- 
erally ended by voting in the teeth of his own speech." 
To this earlier period belongs, too, a parlor scene of the 
Duke of Wellington with Miss Jervis singing to him and 
entertaining him — just the sort of scene that one would 
find only in a letter. Among the brightest social sketches, 
however, is that of the scene at Lady Ashburton's table 
when Tennyson was a new-comer at the seat of honor 
beside her, and Taylor gave him warning: "Twenty years 
ago I was the last new man, and where am I now?" 
Whereupon the lady rose in defense of her constancy, 
and ended by saying that "of course one's affection for 
one's old friends was a different thing." Then Tennyson 
asking " 'what time it took to make an old friend,' I 
replied that with her five years reduced it to the decencies 
of dry affection"; and on Lady Ashburton's again com- 
ing to the defense of the lasting character of her attach- 
ments, Taylor said that he did "not dispute that they 
hardened into permanence. But what I was speaking 
of was the case of Alfred Tennyson, and I could only say 
that this time last year I had seen Mr. Goldwin Smith 
sitting by her side at dinner, just as I had seen Alfred 
Tennyson yesterday; and that I expected to see Alfred 
Tennyson this time next year occupying the position 
which I was told Mr. Goldwin Smith had occupied when 
he was here last week. I had not seen it myself, but 
it had been described to me. He came to the Grange 



86 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

last year, innocent and happy in the bloom of youth, 
with violet eyes; and what he was now I had not seen, 
but I had heard of it." Then Lady Ashburton explained 
that a stranger is often shy, and so on, and Tennyson 
broke in with, "Then it appears, by what you say your- 
self, that you do not show me any particular favors." 
She said, "Well, it is a different sort of feeling that one 
has for a new friend and an old one; but you, Mr. Ven- 
ables, are now almost an old acquaintance, and you can 
say what you feel about it." "Then," the narrative goes 
on in Taylor's words, "as Venables was beginning to 
bear his testimony, to his infinite horror Alfred said, 
'Why, you told me yourself that Lady Ashburton had 
been very kind to you at first, and that now' — Here 
Venables stopped him, speaking aside in a deprecating 
tone, and I ended the debate by saying, 'Well, Tenny- 
son, all I can say is that my advice to you is to rise with 
your winnings and be off.' Venables said to Mrs. Brook- 
field, afterwards, that Alfred was truly an enfant ter- 
rible." This, as an example of conversation "at the 
Grange," is not without interest, for one does not often 
meet with verbatim reports of how the men and women 
talked at that famous meeting-place. It is pleasant to 
read in the next letter that "there was no pain given in 
these passages between Lady Harriet and me," but all 
was "light, gay, stingless talk." 

Another portion of the correspondence deals with polit- 
ical affairs, and here one finds Lord Gray, whose love of 
justice is a most noticeable trait, and, besides Gladstone 
in person, talk about Disraeli, Governor Eyre, and the 
Jamaica incident, and such topics as reform of the penal 
code, Irish affairs, constitutional changes, Bulgaria, the 
colonial relations, and the like; but this portion of the 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR 87 

contents is incidental and comparatively small. It is 
interesting to observe that to a lifelong opposition to 
field-sports and a horror of vivisection Taylor added 
a belief in the efficacy of the lash upon criminals, and 
in general of sharp physical punishments, though he dis- 
approved, apparently, of employing such correctives upon 
hardened offenders. The inconsistency, from the senti- 
mental point of view, is solved by remembering that 
Taylor thought out these conclusions rationally, instead 
of arriving at them by sensitive feelings. His defense 
of the whipping-post goes to the point of advocacy. 
Of the persons who are to be met with, in this part of the 
letters, Lord Gray is by far the most impressive; and 
of the lesser men, the Elliots are most attractive. The 
figure of Sir John Grant is one not to be met with out- 
side of the English hunting-grounds, and it is briefly 
drawn: "I found him in what the house-agents call a 
'spacious mansion,' with glowing pictures on the walls, 
presenting divers interesting objects without clothes. 
And I found flesh in a variety of other exquisite forms 
upon the dinner-table, and he looked a tall, large, solid, 
substantial man, with a russet face expressing ease and 
comfort; and I asked him what could induce him to 
leave all this, and 'live laborious days' in Jamaica. His 
answer was: 'I cannot tell you, for I do not know. When 
I came from India, three years since, I found my leisure 
altogether delightful, and came to the conclusion that 
what I was made for was to swing upon a gate. I have 
seen no reason to think otherwise since, and why I am 
going to Jamaica I cannot understand!' I hear," con- 
cludes Taylor ,"he was infinitely laborious as Lieutenant- 
Governor of Bengal, and that he is one of the few men 
to whom idleness and labor are equally welcome." But 



38 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

the life-likeness of Taylor's portraiture and anecdote is 
well enough known from his "Autobiography." In age his 
pen was more effective than in early manhood, and seems 
to have been more free in comment. His remark upon 
Macaulay's personal appearance, in connection with the 
latter's expressing some vanity on hearing that the hand- 
somest woman in London had pronounced his profile to 
be a study for an artist, is an admirable example of the 
vigor of his short sentences in latter days. "His looks," 
writes Taylor, "always seemed to me the most impudent 
contradiction of himself that Nature had ever dared to 
throw in a man's face." 

The correspondence as a whole is a subsidiary volume; 
but apart from the more important "Autobiography," it 
has a high value of its own as a collection of letters by 
men and women of cultivation, and one feels in them the 
presence of social tact and manners, as well as much 
strength of mind, occasional wit, and in one case, at 
least, remarkable grace in expression. They are a record 
of London life, notwithstanding the fact that the cor- 
respondents often lived in the country; for it was Lon- 
don that united them. It is quite in keeping with the 
tone of the book to find Taylor himself, in early man- 
hood, so much a Londoner as to confess that "the 
Regent's Park is more beautiful in my eyes than Venice"; 
and he follows up the declaration by a description of his 
evening walk there before going to bed, which redeems 
his preference for "the most beautiful civic scenery in 
the world." The intellectual life of London is a brac- 
ing one, and here one gets somewhat nearer to it than 
books often bring the reader, and finds himself always 
in excellent company for the mind. Taylor's individ- 



CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR HENRY TAYLOR 89 

uality naturally gives unity and a dominant tone to the 
volume, and that is perhaps the reason why one is so 
constantly impressed with the solidity of mind and sound- 
ness of judgment which seem to belong to all these cor- 
respondents. 



HAYWARD'S CORRESPONDENCE 

Mr. Hayward, alluding at the end of his life to his 
literary debut as the translator of "Faust," humorously 
remarks: "Lady Blanche Hozier asked me, the other 
day, if I read German; and it is by no means the first 
time that the same question has been put to me." It 
is as the author of that excellent prose version of Goethe's 
great work, published more than half a century ago, 
that his name is best known, though he has a reputa- 
tion of another sort as a critic, which rests upon the 
solid and copious volumes of his reviews. He was born 
in 1 80 1, and, after school days, was articled to a solici- 
tor, and in due course entered at the Inner Temple. He 
joined the famous London Debating Society which Mill 
and the philosophical Radicals had founded, where he 
supported the Tory side, and in 1828 he became editor 
of the Law Magazine, which was established to further 
the cause of law reform. Out of his interest in this 
subject grew some relations with the law professors at 
Gottingen, whom he visited in 1831, and this was the 
beginning of his extensive acquaintance on the Continent, 
which was afterwards of great influence on his career. 
The immediate literary result of this trip to Germany 
was the translation of "Faust," issued in 1833, which at 
once gave its author the position of a known man of 
letters. Mr. Hayward remained a working lawyer, how- 
ever, and received in 1845 an appointment to the rank 
of Queen's Counsel; but this advancement, giving rise 

91 



92 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

to a professional quarrel in consequence of the Benchers 
refusing the customary election to their body, practically 
terminated his legal career. He had been received into 
society, and, as he was already in association with emi- 
nent party men, he fell naturally into politics, as one of 
the Peelites, and was a main support of the Morning 
Chronicle while it was in the interest of that coterie. 
His labors in journalism were signalized by his writing a 
leading article on an important debate, on the bill for 
the repeal of the Navigation Laws, in season for the morn- 
ing's paper — a feat of which it is said: "It revolution- 
ized at a stroke the whole art of leader-writing, and 
statesmen found all at once that, with a quiet man of 
letters sitting in a corner of the gallery with a bit of 
pencil, they had to lay their account for prompt and 
energetic criticism in the newspapers the next day, con- 
currently with the publication of their own speeches, 
instead of criticism the day after, when the speeches 
had done their work." 

The close connection with public life which Mr. Hay- 
ward formed in the course of these years was maintained 
by him; and, though he was never in the House or in 
Government, his place in society, his long experience 
and his abilities, and a certain knowledge of men, sus- 
tained him in an unofficial position of influence. Thiers 
made him the channel of advice during the Crimean war ; 
and in 1870, during the former's diplomatic tour to solicit 
the good offices of the Powers in behalf of France, his 
first visit in England was at the rooms of his old friend. 
Slidell, of Confederate fame, also used Mr. Hayward as 
a means of communication in his efforts to obtain recog- 
nition for his Government; and, in connection with this, 
one notes a call he made on Motley at Vienna in 1862, 



HAYWARD'S CORRESPONDENCE 93 

whom he found "more unreasonable than ever, vowing 
that the restoration of the Union in its entirety was 'as 
sure as the sun in heaven.' " In the changes of the 
Ministries, especially in the days of coalition, Mr. Hay- 
ward was en rapport with the principals, and occasionally 
was useful in personal negotiations. It was on services 
of this nature, in the formation of Lord Aberdeen's Cabi- 
net, that he grounded his application for a Charity Com- 
missionership, which failed; and it is curious to note 
his observation on this incident: "When men work to- 
gether for a party object, they are all entitled, in their 
several ways, to a share in the advantage of success." 
This is not the spoils doctrine, for which it might be 
mistaken, but that of party reward in filling new or va- 
cant offices as against the aristocratic system of nepotism. 
Mr. Hayward never obtained any of the material fruits 
of political service, though a second attempt was made 
for him in later years. He was successively in intimate 
relations with Lyndhurst, Newcastle, Palmerston, and 
Gladstone, and apparently grew liberal with his times. 
It is amusing to find him dismissing Disraeli in 1850 in 
a couple of lines as "very nearly if not quite forgotten"; 
and he adds, "How soon one of these puffed-up reputa- 
tions goes down!" In 1880 he writes, "I have been 
longing for the fall of the Disraeli Government as I did 
for the fall of the Second Empire." He had taken his 
name off the Carlton Club in 1870, having apparently 
had the experience of much bad manners there, after it 
became more a strictly political club than it was in the 
first part of the century; and he was evidently a thorough- 
going Liberal when he died, as we read in one of his last 
letters, "During my long life I never remember a period 
when the English people were less Radical than now." 



94 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Ten years ago Gladstone was writing to him in respect 
to the obstructiveness of the Upper Ten Thousand in 
the political progress of the century, to the same effect 
as was the language he used upon the stump. Hayward's 
interest in politics continued unabated until his death. 

In the whole course of his career he was a careful 
and fluent writer, being reckoned the best of the essay- 
ists of the old school; and since, in his later years, he 
had the great advantage of treating of men whom he had 
known all about in life, his work has a special interest 
and value. Literature consequently shares with politics 
the pages of this correspondence, which derives con- 
siderable luster from the many distinguished names 
among the signatures. At the date of the beginning 
of the series Mr. Hayward was thirty-three years old, 
and had already given some of those little dinners at his 
rooms in the Temple for which he was afterward noted. 
He gathered there intellectual men and brilliant women, 
and in particular he exercised hospitality toward foreign- 
ers; men so various as General von Radowitz, Louis 
Blanc, and the poet Dupont, being among his guests. 
He gives in one place a few instances of the ignorance 
of one another among the eminent writers of Europe that 
had come under his observation. Manzoni did not 
know Bulwer by name in 1834; Schlegel, arriving in 
England in 1832, had not heard of Macaulay; M. Charles 
Dupin did not know of Babbage's 'Manufactures' four 
months after publication; and Say, the economist, was 
unacquainted with Whately's name, though Mr. Hay- 
ward found in Say's library at the time a presentation 
copy of the 'Lectures' "from the Archbishop of Dublin." 
At Mr. Hayward's rooms such international indifference 
was as likely to be corrected as anywhere in London. He 



HAYWARD'S CORRESPONDENCE 95 

made many short, journeys to the Continent, usually to 
Paris, and thus renewed and strengthened old ties and 
formed new ones; but his travels dealt with persons of 
distinction and affairs, and were fruitful only of informa- 
tion and social alliances. The mass of his correspond- 
ence, consequently, is wide in range of acquaintance, and 
friendly in tone; there is in it naturally a very large pro- 
portion of what is transitory and not a little that is trivial 
— society and political news, the record of dinners, the 
chances of Parliament, ministerial changes, etc. The 
whole is a very heterogeneous collection of notes and 
letters, light and serious, dull and entertaining, but it 
affords a fair retrospect of half a century of London 
life in the world of affairs and entertainment. Of the 
substance it is to be said that it has less solid value than 
one would have expected. 

The literary portion is extraordinarily meager. The 
best of the letters are from the sprightly pen of Mrs. 
Norton; and the feminine correspondence in general is 
the most pleasant feature of the volumes. Very few 
of the letters, however, deal with literary reputations 
either in the way of anecdote or criticism. In reply to 
a request for material for an essay upon Rogers, Mrs. 
Norton writes very justly of him as a small man filling a 
miraculously large place in the world, and defines his 
individuality by saying that tastes were to him what pas- 
sions are to other men: "He did nothing rash. I am 
sure Rogers as a baby never fell down, unless he was 
pushed; but walked from chair to chair of the drawing- 
room furniture steadily and quietly till he reached the 
place where the sunbeam fell on the carpet." He pre- 
ferred a lullaby to the merriest game of romps, she 
thinks, and would have begged that his long clothes 



96 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

might be made of fine mull muslin instead of cambric, 
which was capable of a thing "he loathed, starch," 
Lady Dufferin writes on the same subject: "I never 
could lash myself into a feeling of affection or admiration 
for him. ... I have heard him say many graceful 
things, but few kind ones, and he never seemed to me 
thoroughly in earnest save in expressing contempt or 
dislike. ... It seemed a positive pain to him to hear 
any modern poet praised, and I remember his treating me 
with a rudeness almost bearish because I indiscreetly 
avowed how much I admired Tennyson's 'Princess.' " 
She then tells the anecdote of being accidentally left in 
the dark with him, and his jest: "Ah, my dear, if sweet 
seventy-eight could come again! Mais ces beaux jours 
sont passes" Besides these brief passages on Rogers 
there is really nothing of interest in regard to the world 
of letters, except an opinion of Bulwer's on Macaulay, 
in which he remarks that the historian's acquaintance 
with the world — that is, with men's actual characters — 
was slight, and then recites what are now the common- 
places of criticism on Macaulay (but this was in 1861) 
— that his style excludes many of the nobler excellences, 
being without modesty, or suggestiveness, and is, besides, 
indebted to coarse tricks of art in color and contrast, while 
the secret of his vogue is discovered in his relieving his 
readers from any necessity to think. Apropos of a wordy 
letter of Carlyle's Mr. Hayward himself writes: "I never 
yet followed him to the authorities without finding him 
wrong. In my 'Essay on Marshal Saxe' I have proved 
from signed documents that Carlyle's labored account 
of the battle of Fontenoy is essentially incorrect. He 
is a man of genius, undoubtedly, but he has injured 
instead of improving literature, and taste; and, as to 



HAYWARD'S CORRESPONDENCE 97 

his conversation, if he spoke English and attended to 
the rules of good breeding, its charm for the mass of his 
admirers would disappear." In another place is an 
equally brief judgment on Balzac, whom he was rereading 
in his seventy-eighth year and found not to improve: "the 
fineness of observation and analysis of feeling are unde- 
niable, but his descriptions, both of places and charac- 
ters, are tediously spun out, his plots teem with im- 
probability, and he has a vulgar fondness for wealth 
and rank." 

These extracts practically comprise the entire literary 
interest of the two volumes; nor are there any anecdotes 
by the way to speak of, if we except the droll suggestion 
of Hook to Lord Lyndhurst, who had come to a- dinner 
with gold-laced trousers, that "to appear with all his 
glories he should reverse his position in the chair." 
Lord Lyndhurst appears very agreeably in the earlier 
pages, but death soon removed him. To him is attrib- 
uted the witticism apropos of Mme. Genlis's keeping 
her books in detached cases, the male authors in one 
and the female in the other, that the reason was "she did 
not wish to add to her library" — a joke unfairly claimed 
by James Smith. Of the correspondence with public 
men, that of Sir Henry Bulwer (Lord Dalling) is of 
most note. In his long and varied service he had ex- 
perience of state affairs in many lands, and his remarks 
are pointed, shrewd, and sensible. Writing of the 
Ionian Island difficulty in 1863, ne illustrates his width 
of view and soundness of principle: "The tendency to 
resign empire is a dangerous one for an empire to fall 
into; but if a people wish to get out of your hands, and 
public opinion is not for keeping them, a Minister in 
what is called, and is, a free country can have no policy 



98 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

of his own in the matter." And, again, of the Eastern 
question, in the same year, he states the function of Eng- 
land very aptly as being "to prevent no government taking 
the place of some government, and urging and helping a 
bad government to be better than it was." As the nego- 
tiator of the Bulwer-Clayton Treaty, what he thought of 
our diplomacy has some interest, and he expressed his 
opinion very frankly on the question of the indirect 
claims being urged under the Washington Treaty: "When 
I had to make a treaty with them [the American states- 
men] I took the trouble of going over all their own 
treaties, and only using in important passages such words 
as they had used, in the sense in which they had used 
them. Then when they began their usual disputes 
about interpretation, I quoted their own authority. All 
their own newspapers acknowledged I was right." 
Sir Henry's mode of meeting his cousins in diplomacy 
was one of commendable safety. He exhibits solidity 
and sense on all occasions where he is met in these letters, 
and yet there was a vein of daring in him hardly conso- 
nant with his caution. His characterization of Peel as a 
state-clock which was silent till it struck the hour, is 
admirable, as are also his observations on the inconven- 
iences of such a political time-piece in a representative 
Government. 

There are one or two interesting communications from 
Mr. A. G. Dunlop about Spain, in which he notices that 
Spanish art was a temporary importation from Italy, 
as Spanish wealth was from America, and both almost 
to be classed as matters of chance, not national develop- 
ment; and he contrasts the Spanish peasant with the 
Italian, South German, or Greek people, as without ap- 
preciation of art, not caring for flowers or trees even, 






HAYWARD'S CORRESPONDENCE 99 

and staring at pictures only because they are "holy" and 
appeal to his superstition. He adds that the Spaniards 
are likewise without any desire for knowledge, and de- 
clares there is no avenir for the pure-blooded race: "If 
the Spaniard remain any longer as he is in spite of rail- 
ways and increased intercourse, the commerce of the 
seaboard will more and more slip away into the hands of 
foreigners — French, German, Swede, English — and the 
pure race (native) will fall back on the interior and 
inland villages, hewers of wood and drawers of water." 
There are letters, too, from Lady Clanricarde (daughter 
of George Canning), with excellent passages on the con- 
dition of Ireland, worth reading now as evidence of the 
long-established, long well-known state of affairs there. 
"It appears to me," she says, "contrary to all I have 
seen or read that a great amount of discontent continu- 
ing in a country should not produce serious results of 
some sort." This concludes the list of really notable 
letters in the department of public affairs. 

Of Mr. Hayward himself one forms a conception not 
very deeply marked. Mr. W. E. Forster says that the 
unique characteristic of his political thought and ex- 
perience was "the result of a curious combination of a 
hard, worldly, even cynical sympathy with popular move- 
ments, and ideal aspirations." He had enemies and 
prejudices; but his strength of character seems to have 
included independence, sincerity, and perfect courage 
as elements, and he was undoubtedly liberalized by the 
variety of his associations with other minds. His career 
was laborious and honored, and one cannot but regret 
that he left no more extensive and notable memoirs, as 
he might well have done. This correspondence is but 
a meager substitute. 



THACKERAY'S LETTERS 

How much formal biography really adds to our 
knowledge of a great literary character is a curious ques- 
tion. Perhaps it is not modesty nor a proud and sensi- 
tive reserve that urges a nature like Hawthorne's to try 
to evade the biographer; nor does mere humbleness of 
spirit account wholly for Thackeray's repeated injunc- 
tion upon his heirs not to allow the public to view his 
private life. Probably every man of literary genius 
who has found expression for what was in him feels that 
his true self is there in his works, and that in his per- 
sonal life, with all its accidental and eccentric details, the 
circumstances of his position and the varying moods of 
his temperament obscure the reality, and are, more 
often than not, misleading. A quarrel that was but an 
incident of a lifetime becomes a long episode in the 
book; a scandal that quickly melted away comes back 
as a cloud not to be dispersed; an irritable letter, an 
imprudent witticism, a blunder in some fit of dullness, 
a piece of self-deception that was only momentary, and 
all the thousand and one superficial matters that fill the 
day are brought into prominence, as if they, and not 
the spirit that underwent these crosses, were the life 
itself. But the real man is in his books. One knows 
that this is so in Thackeray's case. The personality of 
the author is so blended with his characters, and makes 
so largely the main charm of his style, that one comes 
to know him with exceptional nearness, and to feel that 



102 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

there is no other reason to desire a formal biography of 
him than to have more of the same thing. 

In reading the letters which Thackeray wrote to 
his friends, the Brookfields, one is most struck by this 
identity of the man and the author; it affords a most 
startling test of Thackeray's sincerity. Those who are 
lovers of his works, thoroughly familiarized with his 
ways of looking upon the world and his manner of treat- 
ing the individuals who compose it, experience no sur- 
prise at this; but they are delighted to hear the old 
voice speaking again, and pleased to have his qualities 
brought out in this private correspondence so plainly that 
no one, however blind to his real nature in his novels, 
can fail to find in the writer the kindliness, the honesty, 
and goodness of heart which lie at the bottom of all his 
great achievements in literature. He is to be seen here 
as genuinely as Steele in those letters to his wife, which 
are as charming a piece of biography as English litera- 
ture has to show. 

The collection covers eight years of Thackeray's ma- 
ture life. It is composed of every-day notes, written 
from the club or his lodgings about the things of the 
hour; or of longer letters of travel, sent from some 
watering-place on the Continent, or some country retreat 
in England, or from Paris, whither he made frequent 
excursions. They are for the most part entirely per- 
sonal, and describe what happened to himself, or confide 
the moods that visited him; and, too, they are especially 
the letters of a novelist — the world that he sees is the 
very same that he writes about. One may say that in 
the passages concerning persons we read his novels in 
the rough, his notes still unelaborated ; and we see quite 
plainly the method in which he worked up his observa- 



THACKERAY'S LETTERS 103 

tions, and the way in which life reacted upon his mind. 
Such is the description of the friend of his youth, whom 
a score of years before he thought "the most fascinating, 
accomplished, witty, and delightful of men": 

"I found an old man in a room smelling of brandy and 

water, at five o'clock, at , quite the same man that 

I remember, only grown coarser and stale somehow, like 
a piece of goods that has been hanging up in a shop 
window. He has had fifteen years of a vulgar wife, very 
much brandy and water, I should think, and a depressing 
profession; for what can be more depressing than a long 
course of hypocrisy to a man of no small sense of humor? 
It was a painful meeting. We tried to talk unreservedly, 
and as I looked at his face I remembered the fellow I 
was so fond of. . . . He must have been glad, too, 
when I went away, and I dare say is more scornful 
about me than I about him. I used to worship him for 
about six months, and now he points a moral and adorns 
a tale such as it is in Tendennis.' . . . Poor old Harry 

! and this battered, vulgar man was my idol of 

youth." 

It is worth noting that Thackeray's satire is not merely 
that of a man acquainted with the world, not hard, and 
incisive, and sneering only, but that of a man who in 
his youth had "a knack of setting up idols to worship," 
and in whom acquaintance with the world was not only 
knowledge, but disappointment. Regret, the remem- 
brance of better things, is one of the colors of his style; 
it is "the principle" of which he elsewhere speaks as 
based "on the eternal data of perennial reminiscences." 

A particular interest attaches to the half dozen para- 
graphs, scattered through the volume, in which Thacke- 
ray expresses his convictions upon religious topics. It 



104 LITERARY MEMORIES 

is a very simple creed, and is usually brought to the 
surface by way of reaction against some irritating doc- 
trine of a more stalwart church than that in which he 
is militant. A sentence or two may not be out of 
place: — 

"The light upon all the saints in heaven is just as 
much, and no more, God's work as the sun which shall 
shine to-morrow upon this infinitesimal speck of crea- 
tion, and under which I shall read, please God, a letter 
from my kindest lady and friend. About my future 
state I don't know; I leave it in the disposal of the aw- 
ful Father — but for to-day I thank God that I can 
love you, and that you yonder, and others besides, are 
thinking of me with a tender regard. Hallelujah may be 
greater in degree than this, but not in kind, and count- 
less ages of stars may be blazing infinitely, but you and 
I have a right to rejoice and believe in our little part, and 
to trust in to-day as in to-morrow. . . . When I am 
on a cloud a-singing or a-pot-boiling, I will do my best; 
and if you are ill, you can have consolation; if you have 
disappointments, you can invent fresh sources of hope 
and pleasure. . . . By Jove! I'll admire, if I can, 
the wing of a cock-sparrow as much as the pinion of 
an archangel, and adore God, the Father of the earth, 
first; waiting for the completion of my senses, and the 
fulfilment of his intentions towards me afterwards when 
this scene closes over us. So, when Bullar turns up his 
eye to the ceiling, I'll look straight at your dear kind 
face and thank God for knowing that, my dear; and 
though my nose is a broken pitcher, yet, lo and behold! 
there's a well gushing over with kindness in my heart, 
where my dear lady may come and drink." 

All this, however, one can read in the novels as plainly, 



THACKERAY'S LETTERS 105 

if one will, and perceive in it the real piety toward heaven 
and brotherliness toward man which belong to a large, 
grateful, and honest heart, much perplexed and cast down 
before the gorgeous presence of the Church Established. 
But why go on to detail what every one interested 
will read for himself? The little satirical vignettes, ma 
cousine at Paris, the cavalier lady in the row, the 
Continental table d'hote where he dined like "an ordi- 
nary person," the French plays with their naughtinesses 
and their little girls singing for the dragoons, Jules 
Janin, the Chinaman kissing the Duke of Wellington, to 
that "old boy's" great surprise, the old gentleman in 
pantalets — all these one must look at for himself. The 
unfailing interest in human life, especially in the worldly 
stage, and in little else besides; the preoccupation with 
the novels in hand, and their reality to the author as 
part and parcel of the life he has lived; the just eye for 
the visible weaknesses of mortals, and the charitable- 
ness and self-abasement of him who recognized it all as 
of a piece with his own humble human nature; the con- 
stant and unwearied lovingness of the man whose Lares 
and Penates were tenderness and humor; his generous 
admiration — these belong to his personality, and are 
not to be understood except in their concrete expression; 
and the whole volume which contains these things must 
be read, if one would understand. It is in no sense a 
life of Thackeray; it is a better thing — it is Thacke- 
ray living. 



DARWIN'S LIFE 

There is nothing more useful to observe in the life of 
Darwin than its simplicity. He was the man of science 
as Marlborough was the soldier, and he was only that. 
From boyhood he refused all other ways of life and 
knowledge as by instinct, and in his maturity the ill 
health which ends the career of ordinary men only con- 
firmed him in his own; he was always the collector, the 
investigator, or the theorizer. A second quality, which 
is general enough to be constantly attracting attention, 
is the thoroughly English character of his life. The 
stock from which he sprang was rich in old English 
qualities of vigor, sense, and originality; the house in 
which he was reared offers an excellent type of Eng- 
lish family life, and was as good a place to be born in 
as could be desired for any son; his father's strong char- 
acter, the influence of his older relatives, the ordinary 
schools he attended, the smallest incidents of his child- 
hood, even the jokes of his playfellows, belong to the 
moral climate of the old country; and it does not need 
the grouse-shooting, the Cambridge undergraduate sup- 
pers, and the proposition that he should choose the 
Church for a profession to tell us where we are. In- 
deed, Darwin in his youth, spirited, cordial, and over- 
flowing with health, in his early surroundings of Eng- 
lish strength and kindness, was quite as attractive as in 
his quieter, and in some respects narrower, working life. 

He certainly won upon the men whom he met at the 

107 



108 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

outset of his career. "Looking back/' he says, "I infer 
that there must have been something in me a little supe- 
rior to the common run of youths: otherwise the above- 
mentioned men, so much older than me and higher in 
academical position, would never have allowed me to 
associate with them. Certainly I was not aware of any 
such superiority; and I remember one of my sporting 
friends, Turner, who saw me at work with my beetles, 
saying that I should some day be a Fellow of the Royal 
Society, and the notion seemed to me preposterous." 
Of these men Henslow was the most attached to him and 
interested in his success. He had not done much more 
than work at "his beetles," but his scientific taste was 
already the ruling genius of his life. It is surprising to 
see how completely he remained untouched by the ordi- 
nary influences of a university training; he thought in 
later years that his scholastic education had been a waste 
of time, and he seems justified when one perceives how 
little good he got from it. His was a mind that belonged 
to himself, self-fed, almost self-made; he lived his own 
life, and not another's, from the start; though his taste 
for collecting was hereditary, the persistence with which 
he gave himself up to following it, the completeness 
of his surrender to his one predominant talent, was his 
own. He was, nevertheless, better furnished with intel- 
lectual power than he appears to have believed. "From 
my earliest youth," he writes, "I have had the strongest 
desire to understand or explain whatever I observed, that 
is, to group all facts under some general laws." It is 
true that he started from some specific facts, had a defi- 
nite, tangible problem to solve; but he felt the necessity 
to solve it. He differed from the collector in this, that 
his curiosity was not exhausted in gathering materials, 



DARWIN'S LIFE 109 

but he must also order his materials; or to put it 
exactly, must organize his knowledge. This shows the 
great vitality of his reasoning faculty, which within its 
special range was really precocious. The native strength 
of his mind in this direction is also illustrated by the great 
pleasure he derived from reading Paley's "Evidences." 
"The logic of this book," he declares, "and, as I may 
add, of his 'Natural Theology,' gave me as much delight 
as did Euclid. The careful study of these works, with- 
out attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only 
part of the academical course which, as I then felt and 
as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the edu- 
cation of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself 
about Paley's premises; and taking these in trust, I was 
charmed and convinced by the long line of argumenta- 
tion." He acknowledges his inability in later life to 
follow trains of abstract reasoning, such as make the 
matter of metaphysics; but he was quite aware of his 
aptitude for inductive reasoning, and does not overesti- 
mate its influence in the composition of his great work. 
"Some of my critics have said, 'Oh, he is a good observer, 
but he has no power of reasoning!' I do not think that 
this can be true, for the 'Origin of Species' is one long 
argument from the beginning to the end, and it has con- 
vinced not a few able men." His taste for collecting was 
a sine qua non, but it was this power of reasoning, 
however limited in range, that made him great; and it 
is as clearly to be seen in operation in his formative years 
as was the passion for collecting which was to feed it 
with material to work upon. His vivacity and energy 
no doubt counted much in winning for him the friendship 
of elder men, and he possessed that indefinable but 
potent quality of personal attractiveness: but Henslow 



no LITERARY MEMOIRS 

in the beginning, as Lyell later, must have seen in him 
that happy conjunction of tastes and faculties which 
made his genius for science, or at least they must have 
perceived the promise of it. 

All the circumstances of his life seem to have con- 
spired to favor this special endowment. The very fact 
that the classics did nothing for him helped him: he was 
relieved from the confusion caused by complex and 
disturbing elements in a varied education; he had 
no difficulty in making his choice; he was not after- 
ward drawn aside by the existence of other unsatisfied 
tastes, artificially cultivated; he had no ambition for 
that roundness of development which is a fetich of 
modern times; he did not fritter away his time and energy 
in directions in which he could not excel. It is not 
meant to hold up his luck in this respect as exemplary 
good fortune, but only to emphasize the way in which 
it told on his success. He was not less happy in the 
exterior circumstances of his life, and in those things 
which come by a kind of hazard. His appointment to 
the Beagle was a Napoleonic opportunity, and in looking 
back he realized its value to the full: "The voyage of 
the Beagle has been by far the most important event in 
my life, and has determined my whole career; yet it 
depended on so small a circumstance as my uncle offer- 
ing to drive me thirty miles to Shrewsbury, which few 
uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as the shape 
of my nose." But one ought not to exaggerate the ele- 
ment of chance; and though Captain Fitz-roy had con- 
tinued to disapprove of Darwin's nose, and his uncle had 
not interfered to overcome the elder Darwin's objection 
to the voyage on the score that it would be an unbecom- 
ing adventure for a prospective clergyman, and on other 



DARWIN'S LIFE in 

equally good or better grounds, yet we might have had 
our great naturalist. The voyage of the Beagle, never- 
theless, was the turning-point of Darwin's life. He ob- 
tained in the course of it the first real training of his 
mind; it brought before him several departments of 
science in such a way that he approached them with 
active and original thoughts, and was constantly forced 
into an inquiring and bold attitude toward the novel 
material he found; it gave him five years alone with 
science, and free from any near master to whom he might 
have formed the habit of deferring. Huxley does not 
overstate the material advantages that this training 
brought with it: "In Physical Geography, in Geology 
proper, in Geographical Distribution, and in Paleontol- 
ogy, he had acquired an extensive practical training 
during the voyage of the Beagle. He knew of his own 
knowledge the way in which the raw materials of these 
branches of science are acquired, and was therefore a 
most competent judge of the speculative strain they would 
bear. That which he needed, after his return to Eng- 
land, was a corresponding acquaintance with Anatomy 
and Development, and their relations to Taxonomy, and 
he acquired this by his Cirripede work." It is to be 
noticed that during his voyage in the Beagle he became 
convinced of the "wonderful superiority of LyelPs man- 
ner of treating geology" over every other author's. This 
is an illustration, like that drawn from Paley, of the 
character of his mind as primarily a reasoning mind; 
for what he recognized in Lyell was a method. It was 
on this voyage, too, that he became ambitious; he be- 
gan to believe that he might add to the stock of human 
knowledge, and the stimulation of the welcome his suc- 
cess was meeting in England was evidently keenly felt. 



H2 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

He put his whole heart into the work, and few passages 
are more stirring than those which describe his zeal in 
his first really scientific enthusiasm, after he had given 
up his gun as of less use than his eye, and had found 
sport, even with his fond love of it, an inferior pleasure 
to the pursuit of knowledge; then, alone in the Andes 
and the Southern Ocean, he came to his majority. 

Mr. Huxley, in the passage cited, has noted the need 
Darwin had for further training, particularly as a natu- 
ralist. He obtained this by his work on the Cirripedes, 
an eight years' labor. This concluded his education. 
Of the value of it merely as training and to him- 
self, Sir Joseph Hooker says: "Your father recognized 
three stages in his career as a biologist: the mere col- 
lector at Cambridge; the collector and observer in the 
Beagle, and for some years afterwards; and the trained 
naturalist after, and only after, the Cirripede work. 
That he was a thinker all along is true enough." Hux- 
ley says that Darwin never did a wiser thing than when 
he devoted himself to these years of patient toil. Dar- 
win himself does not indicate that he purposely chose 
to do this monograph in order to educate himself, and he 
doubts whether it was worth the time. He seems to have 
been gradually drawn into it, and to have finished it 
because he had gone so far. When he had done with 
it, at any rate, if not before, he was a thoroughly fur- 
nished man for such investigation as was to be his title 
to lasting fame. He had come to be thus equipped by 
the mere course of his life; by beetles at Cambridge, and 
the Beagle, and the Cirripedes. Yet if he had planned 
his education from the start for the express purpose of 
dealing in the most masterly way with the mass of diversi- 
fied details out of which the "Origin of Species" and the 



DARWIN'S LIFE 113 

other derivative coordinate works grew, it is hard to see 
in what way his course could have been improved. The 
ill-health which seized him so soon was almost a blessing 
in disguise, since it isolated him from the distractions 
of modern London, made him value his life and his time, 
and possibly, by the economy of his strength which it 
necessitated, aided as much as it hindered him. 

One need not follow him through the composition of 
his books, or even through the elaboration of the theory 
of natural selection, during the many years that it was 
growing in his laboratory of notes. For him the formu- 
lating of that theory was inevitable: it seems, as one ob- 
serves him, natural enough to have been foretold of him; 
but it followed, not from his position, which another 
man might have occupied, but from his genius. The 
qualities of mind which it required were not many, and 
one understands readily why it is so commonly said that 
all is explained by his power of observation and its vast 
range; but it did require one high faculty of the mind, 
and a rare one, which Darwin had preeminently among 
the men of his time — the faculty, namely, of discerning 
the lines of inquiry in a mass of as yet unrelated facts. 
He somewhere says that he had found it harder, perhaps, 
to put the question than it was to reach the answer. This 
power is the great economizer of mental energy, in any 
branch of investigation; it is, to the man who has it, 
equivalent to a compass; and to Darwin it was the one 
talent without which his stores of knowledge would have 
been no more than a heap of unclassified specimens in a 
museum cellar. Moral and physical qualities he had, be- 
sides; his patience and his practised vision were invalu- 
able; but it was the intellectual part that penetrated the 
secrets of nature. This sense of the problem, this eye 



ii 4 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

for the question, was most serviceable to his success. His 
acuteness in perceiving the importance of the infinitely 
little, which is often mentioned as one of his distinguish- 
ing traits, was only an incident of this larger endowment; 
and his power to make other men useful to him, specialists 
in horticulture or physiology, or even common observing 
men, was only the knowledge of how to put practical 
questions. The point is worth emphasizing, because in 
this age of the accumulation of scientific detail it is too 
apt to be forgotten that the thinking mind is as rare in 
science as in other departments, and is, nevertheless, the 
indispensable thing which makes a man great. 

Here it is worth while to advert to that persistent dis- 
cussion respecting the nature of a modern education, 
which Darwin's experience is bound to bring forward with 
renewed vigor. His testimony, both in the chart of him- 
self which he gave Mr. Galton and in the account he 
wrote for his children, is unequivocal. He says he was 
self-taught; that his training at the university was of no 
use to him, speaking generally, and that the classics in 
particular were barren. He seems to be quite correct 
in his statement; the claim that his powers of observa- 
tion and comparison were really developed by schoolboy 
attention to Latin and Greek terminations is purely peda- 
gogical; nor is there any reason to question that men of 
genius can be successful, achieve eminent greatness for 
themselves, and do work of the highest value to society 
without immediate obligation to those studies usually 
called the humanities. This is nothing new. Instances 
of self-education for special careers are to be found in 
other walks than those of science: in war, in administra- 
tion, and generally in active life, and not infrequently in 
literature itself. But it is worth observing what testi- 



DARWIN'S LIFE 115 

mony these volumes bear to the wonderful vitality of the 
Greek intelligence. Speaking of the theory of Pangen- 
esis, Darwin writes to a correspondent that the views of 
Hippocrates "seem almost identical with mine — merely 
a change of terms, and an application of them to classes 
of facts necessarily unknown to the old philosopher." 
Again, he writes of Aristotle: "From quotations which 
I had seen I had a high notion of Aristotle's merits, but 
I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful 
man he was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two 
gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere 
schoolboys to old Aristotle. ... I never realized, be- 
fore reading your book, to what an enormous consum- 
mation of labor we owe even our common knowledge." A 
more striking passage is that of Huxley's, where he says : 
"The oldest of all philosophies, that of evolution, was 
bound hand and foot and cast into utter darkness dur- 
ing the millennium of theological scholasticism. But 
Darwin poured new lifeblood into the ancient frame; 
the bonds burst, and the revivified thought of ancient 
Greece has proved itself to be a more adequate expres- 
sion of the universal order of things than any of the 
schemes which have been accepted by the credulity and 
welcomed by the superstition of seventy later genera- 
tions of men." Rediscovery, however, is not obligation; 
and, perhaps, if Darwin had been thoroughly imbued 
with the Greek mode of looking upon the universe, he 
would not have been really indebted to it for his own 
views; for he went upon different grounds in forming 
his conceptions. The real question is, not whether Dar- 
win succeeded without Greek influences, but whether 
he lost anything because of his failure to assimilate 
them. The answer seems plain. It is written all over 



n6 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

these pages, and is expressly given by Darwin in more 
than one passage. 

No words can be too strong to express the lovableness 
of Darwin's personality, or the moral beauty of his 
character. In his biography, it is true, he is presented 
as the man of science; but he is seen occasionally in other 
aspects. He was a dutiful, respectful, and affectionate 
son, at the outset of his life. He thought his father was 
sometimes unjust, but he always spoke of him as "the 
wisest man he ever knew"; and there is a touching pas- 
sage in one of his letters home, when his father had sent 
him a note: "I almost cried for pleasure at receiving it; 
it was very kind, thinking of writing to me." He was 
also, in his turn, an admirable father, considerate, patient, 
and very tender. One of his sons tells a most significant 
anecdote of once having drawn on himself some indignant 
exclamation, "almost with fury," and the end of it be- 
ing that "next morning, at seven o'clock or so, he came 
into my bed-room and sat on my bed, and said he had 
not been able to sleep, from the thought that he had 
been so angry with me, and after a few more kind words 
he left me." His description of his little daughter who 
died is of itself enough to show the extraordinarily fine 
quality of his affections; and in general his relations with 
his children are almost ideal in gentleness, kindness, and 
companionableness. He was also a good friend and 
acquaintance. In a word, in his private social rela- 
tions he was exemplary, judged by the standard of a 
high civilization. He was not without a sense, too, of 
public duty. He felt strongly only upon the subject of 
slavery, and this was largely because of his travels in 
slave countries. He was interested in philanthropic 
efforts to some degree, and especially in furthering 






DARWIN'S LIFE 117 

the increase of kindness to animals. But he was re- 
mote from public affairs, and led even in his sympathies 
a life somewhat narrowly confined to his own circle and 
his work in science. In other parts of his character 
there is nothing to displease. He was modest and just, 
and free from envy, conscientious to an extreme, and 
as ready to give as to receive help in all ways. He was 
more pleased with his fame than he acknowledged; he 
cared deeply for the success of his theory, and was well 
aware of its influence on his own reputation as one to 
be classed with Newton's; he liked praise and distinc- 
tion, though he limited his desire to the commendation 
and respect of naturalists; but this is only to wish to be 
approved by the most competent judges. He was fair 
to Wallace, and exhibited the best of tempers toward 
him; but between the lines one reads that he was nettled 
and annoyed by the incident, and it must be concluded 
that as he was ambitious in youth, he was desirous of 
having his due in manhood, and valued fame. 

This was a character which might well spare the 
humanities. The fact remains that he did spare them. 
What he lost was culture. The confession that he makes 
of the gradual atrophy of his esthetic tastes will be long 
quoted as one of the most remarkable facts of his life. 
He began with a susceptibility to music, which by his 
son's account he did not lose; with a liking for poetry, 
such that he read "The Excursion" twice, and he would 
not have read it except for pleasure; and he used to take 
Milton with him in his pocket. In art he went but a 
little way, if, indeed, he ever really had any eye for it. 
He was religious, as an English boy usually is; but his 
interest in belief regarding religious subjects died out, and, 
what is of more consequence, the emotions which were 



u8 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

called out by it in early life ceased to be exercised. 
There was a deadening, in other words, of all his nature, 
except so far as it was fed by his work, his family, and 
his friends in its intellectual and social parts. So com- 
plete was this change that it affected even his appreci- 
ation of beautiful scenery, which had evidently given 
him keen delight in his youth and travels. He dates 
this change from just after his thirtieth year, when he 
became absorbed in scientific pursuits as his profession. 
Something, no doubt, and perhaps much, is to be set 
down to the effect of his ill-health, which left him with 
diminished energies for any recreation; his strength was 
exhausted in his few hours of work. He was himself 
so convinced that his life had been narrowed in these 
ways, that he says if he had it to live over he would 
have planned to give a certain time habitually to poetry. 
It would be too much to say that the failure of Darwin 
to appropriate the humane elements in his university 
education accounts in any perceptible degree for these 
defects. In culture, as in science, the self-making power 
of the man counts heavily; and there is such ineffi- 
ciency in those whose duty it is to give youth a liberal 
education from classical sources, there are such wrong 
methods and unintelligent aims in the universities, that 
it might easily prove to be the case that a student with 
the most cordial temperament toward the humanities 
would profit only imperfectly by his residence at seats of 
learning. In spite of these reservations however, the 
Greek culture is the historical source of what are tradi- 
tionally the higher elements in our intellectual life, and 
has been for most cultivated men the practical discipline 
of their minds. But it is to be further observed that the 
example of Darwin, if it should be set up as showing 



DARWIN'S LIFE 119 

that Greek culture is unnecessary in modern days, goes 
just as directly and completely to prove that all literary 
education, as well by modern as by ancient authors, is 
superfluous. It is enough to indicate to what a length 
the argument must be carried, if it is at all admitted. 
The important matter is rather the question, How much 
was Darwin's life injured for himself by his loss of 
culture, in the fact that some of those sources of intel- 
lectual delight which are reputed the most precious for 
civilized man were closed to him? 

The blank page in this charming biography is the 
page of spiritual life. There is nothing written there. 
The entire absence of an element which enters com- 
monly into all men's lives in some degree is a circum- 
stance as significant as it is astonishing. Never was a 
man more alive to what is visible and tangible, or in 
any way matter of sensation; on the sides of his nature 
where an appeal could be made, never was a man more 
responsive; but there were parts in which he was blind 
and dull. Just as the boy failed to be interested in many 
things, the man failed too; and he disregarded what did 
not interest him with the same ease at sixty as at 
twenty. What did interest him was the immediately 
present, and he dealt with it admirably, both in the in- 
tellectual and the moral world ; but what was remote was 
as if it were not. The spiritual element in life is not 
remote, but it is not matter of sensation, and Darwin 
lived as if there were no such thing; it belongs to the 
region of emotion and imagination, and those percep- 
tions which deal with the nature of man in its contrast 
with the material world. Poetry, art, music, the emo- 
tional influences of nature, the idealizations of moral 
life, are the means by which men take possession of this 



izo LITERARY MEMOIRS 

inner world of man; to which, for man at least, nature 
in all its immensity is subsidiary. Darwin's insensibil- 
ity to the higher life — for so men agree to call it — 
was partly, if not wholly, induced by his absorption in 
scientific pursuits in the spirit of materialism. We praise 
him for his achievements, we admire his character, and 
we feel the full charm of his temperament; he delights us 
in every active manifestation of his nature. We do not 
now learn for the first time that a man may be good with- 
out being religious, and successful without being liberally 
educated, and worthy of honor without being spiritual; 
but a man may be all this and yet be incomplete. Great as 
Darwin was as a thinker, and winning as he remains as 
a man, those elements in which he was deficient are the 
noblest part of our nature. 



DOBELL'S LIFE AND LETTERS 

It was no fault of Sydney Dobell that the disparity 
between the excellence of his rare natural gifts and the 
meagerness of their literary result is so great, for the 
difficulties which beset him made partial failure inev- 
itable. The disastrous nature of his early education has 
seldom been paralleled in the records of blighted genius, 
and in manhood, when he had emancipated himself from 
it to some degree, successive misfortunes struck down 
and maimed his powers. His parents were members of 
a Church which had been founded by his mother's 
father, a free-thinking Christian of the last century, to 
bring about a return to the apostolic practice, and was 
thought by them to be the germ of a great religious re- 
form. They believed that Sydney, their first-born, was 
the chosen instrument of God for this work. The child 
was precocious in mind and endowed with all the sus- 
ceptibility to emotion which belongs to the poetic tempera- 
ment. Every new sign of intellectual strength or reli- 
gious fervor was to his parents a fresh proof of the 
boy's divine calling, and their injudicious zeal stimu- 
lated a development which would have been abnormally 
rapid under the best care. His mission was instilled 
into his thoughts when he was four years old; at eight 
years his diary is filled with theology and his waste-paper 
with verses; at ten he falls in love; at twelve, enters his 
father's office and begins a life of business routine; at 
fourteen he is prostrated with nervous fever; at fifteen, 



122 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

is engaged to be married, and considering the publica- 
tion of a drama on Napoleon which he had written and 
Campbell had read; at seventeen, we read of long-con- 
tinued and exhausting prayer; eloquent church oratory 
follows; at twenty he is married; at twenty- three the 
blow falls, and he is prostrated with a nearly fatal dis- 
ease which left him a man of broken health. The 
history of these years is given scantily in these volumes, 
but there are many indications of their unnatural life; 
his father says, for example, that in his delirium, when 
the sense of locality and the memory of faces were lost, 
he talked rationally on moral and reflective subjects; 
and his wife says of their courtship, in a remark of 
blended humor and pathos, "the more we loved, the more 
we prayed." He himself gives the clearest glimpse of 
the nervous intoxication of his boyhood in a letter to 
his sister, where he says, "I shall not cease to look back 
on the four or five years preceding my illness with a 
kind of self-reverence — as to an impossible saintdom 
to which I would not return, but which I can never 
equal on this side the grave. I see that I have a wider 
mission and a rougher excellence before me; but I can- 
not look back without a melancholy interest to the years 
when I never thought a thought or said a word but under 
the very eyes of God." Such experience necessarily left 
indelible traces; the practical result of his education was 
a physical blow, and it is easy to observe in his letters 
after this time symptoms of lingering disease, as when 
he speaks of having a double consciousness of locality, 
or of being seized b}' spontaneous trains of thought of 
unusual brilliance, but which he cannot recollect on com- 
ing out of this state. 
With such a mind and body he began his literary 






DOBELL'S LIFE AND LETTERS 123 

career, against the remonstrance of his parents, who still 
believed in his apostolic mission. He published two 
dramas which have passed into literature, and a vol- 
ume of war-lyrics. He was contemplating an epic on 
the millennium which should be his crowning work, and 
seems to have looked for no activity in any other field than 
literature. But ten years of writing, study, and busi- 
ness, added to the constant and wearying care of an 
invalid wife, overcame his shaken constitution, and at 
thirty-three a second illness practically put an end to 
his career. The two invalids tried all climates with little 
success; accident followed accident; he fell into a Roman 
drain and injured his spine; another fall from his horse 
nearly proved fatal; relapse followed relapse until after 
seventeen years, "wherein," he says, "the keen percep- 
tion of all that should be done, and that so bitterly cries 
for doing, accompanies the consciousness of all I might 
but cannot do," he died in 1874. 

Such warping and blighting influences made Sydney 
Dobell's public service fall so far short of his ex- 
traordinary capacities as to amount practically to fail- 
ure. His senses were abnormally acute, like those of a 
savage, and this made his appreciation of natural love- 
liness remarkably keen; his powers of imagination and 
sympathy and his supersubtle reflective faculty com- 
pleted his poetic endowment. The bent of his mind, the 
surcharging of his soul with religious emotion and mys- 
tical feeling, led him sometimes into that region of dreamy 
poetic conjecture with which readers of the transcen- 
dentalists are familiar, where the object, too vague for 
thought, is grasped at through symbols, and the quali- 
ties of the symbol extended fancifully to the unknown 
object. This, for example, reads like an excerpt from 



124 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Novalis: "What if the visible universe stand in the rela- 
tion to the Divine of the brain to the human soul; hu- 
manity upon its surface answering to the cineritious 
matter; these past six thousand years a passing illness 
of the Eternal Nature, and its scheme of salvation and 
ultimate golden issue a process of Divine physiology?" 
It is not often that he gets so far off his feet as in this 
passage. Here is one of mystical suggestion, which in 
a letter to Charlotte Bronte he says was struck out of 
an article by the sapient editor of the "Eclectic": "Yea, 
O divine earth! O incommunicable beauty! wearing 
thy crown of thorns and having on the purple robes of 
immemorial sunsets, we have parted thy garments among 
us, and for thy vesture have we cast lots"; and he 
is led to this O altitudo! because he has thrown down 
his pen "helpless before this unapproachable world," 
and the unapproachable world was merely apple-trees in 
blossom — "the very Avalon of apple-trees that makes 
an awful rose of dawn toward the east." Such was the 
fervor and intensity of his poetic moods. On more 
prosaic ground he could be sensible enough, but his prej- 
udices were sometimes very curious. "Aurora Leigh" 
he thought no poem because written by a woman, and 
he held "all feminine literature to be an error and an 
anomaly." To a sister he writes: "The passion of writ- 
ing, especially among ladies, is the mental and spiritual 
nuisance of this age. What the young people of the 
day want to learn is that authorship, unless it be of the 
very best — the best and most competent minds expressed 
in the very best ways — is worse than useless"; and again, 
to resist "a temptation which bids fair to stain with ink 
the sweetest sanctuaries of life, and taint with the in- 
evitable evils of every unnatural and abnormal gratifica- 



DOBELL'S LIFE AND LETTERS 125 

tion three-fourths of the women of England." Toward the 
theory of women's rights and the theory of the equality of 
men he was extremely hostile ; but in politics, in which he 
interested himself much, he was in enthusiastic sympathy 
with the Liberals. We read with wicked pleasure the 
letter in which he says he spent an hour walking in his 
garden, and repeating "the damnation of hell" after 
hearing that Mazzini was entrapped in Nuremberg, and 
with amusement the account of how Victor Emmanuel 
lost a present of one of the poet's dogs because he im- 
prisoned Garibaldi. He had many interests — a man 
of business all his life as well as a poet and orator, a 
liberal as well as an aristocrat, the broadest of Broad 
Churchmen as well as an earnest Christian, a lover of 
horses and dogs, used to the saddle, the gun, and the 
rod; he was the most affable as well as the most merci- 
less of critics, and he was the dearest of friends. Vari- 
ously developed in these and many other directions, he 
saved much from the wreck; his private life evinces 
throughout a refined and noble character. He was a 
gentleman of the highest type, who made the most valu- 
able acquisitions in life and shared them as widely as 
he could, who united grace of action in doing a thing 
to "the beauty of reason or feeling that causes it to be 
done"; he used to say, "To do the useful is the tenure 
by which we hold this world, to have done it beautifully 
the condition of our transit to a better," and called at- 
tention repeatedly to "that moral truth still older than 
formularized religion — that relation between the chari- 
table heart and the idealizing eye, which the earliest 
Greeks unconsciously asserted when they entitled the 
Graces the Charities." To see how these principles 
found harmonious expression in a daily life of such pain 



i 2 6 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

and disappointment mitigates the sense of wasteful loss 
which these memoirs arouse; his poetry is un wrought 
ore, his published prose stray leaves of thought, but in 
himself it is not too much to say he came near to his 
own conception of the poet's ideal life: "Thou wert the 
courteousest knight that ever bore shield; thou wert the 
truest friend that ever bestrode horse; thou wert the 
truest lover that ever loved woman; thou wert the kind- 
est man that ever struck with sword ; thou wert the good- 
liest person that ever came among press of knights; 
thou wert the meekest man and the gentlest that ever 
ate in hall with ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight 
to thy mortal foe that ever laid lance in rest." 



WILLIAM BARNES, THE DORSETSHIRE 

POET 

William Barnes belongs to a most interesting class 
of self-made men, who, with exceptional faculties, make 
themselves marked persons, but yet rise little, if at all, 
from their original place among the people. Such a one 
was our Elihu Burritt, whom Barnes recalls by his special 
aptitude for languages; such are those workingmen of 
whom we hear from time to time by the report of some 
Ruskin who has discovered them, who have a native 
taste for botany or geology, or it may be poetry. They 
are distinguished rather in their class than among the 
intellectual group with which, had they been more fortu- 
nately born and placed, they would have been naturally 
associated. Barnes was an unusual example of the 
type. He met with more success, and actually rose in 
social station; but he had the stamp of his country 
origin strongly impressed on him, and he never ceased 
to be thoroughly a man of the people from whom he 
sprang. He is of interest, also, as an excellent speci- 
men of the sort of "original" which we appropriate too 
exclusively to our own nation; he possessed the versatil- 
ity, the knack, the tool-using faculty, and the mental 
curiosity that we associate with the Yankee character, 
and his biography has the double worth of a life active 
in mind and in work. 

He came of farmer stock in Dorset, but in his baby- 
hood he had not the physical vigor and frame that ought 

127 



128 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

to be the birthright of one destined to be a farm-hand. 
It is related that some wise old woman comforted his 
mother with the remark, "Never you mind what he looks 
like, he'll get his living by learning-books and such like." 
He had some schooling, and was early put at a clerk's 
desk in solicitors' offices, where his good penmanship 
saved him from holding a plough, and, as he spent his 
leisure in acquiring knowledge from books, he early set 
up a school, and throve so well that he married in 1827 
and took a larger house for himself and his pupils. He 
had the success he deserved, and, eight years later, finally 
settled in Dorchester, with which place his name and 
labors were closely associated during his active years. 
He had already shown the variety of his tastes by en- 
graving wood-blocks, not with much talent, but for 
publication, nevertheless, and he had written verses in 
the newspapers. He made himself acquainted with 
many languages — Welsh and Hindustanee among the 
rest — and had begun his philological studies. Being dis- 
contented with the text-books used in his school, he 
wrote an arithmetic, a geography, and a grammar for 
the use of his pupils, upon what he thought better prin- 
ciples. He became a principal founder of the Dorset 
Museum, and took his boys out on scientific walks as a 
part of their education, and also to get specimens in the 
newly opened railway cuttings. He was an antiquarian, 
too, and took a leading part in the Society which ex- 
amined and speculated about British and Roman re- 
mains; and, to mention a few other of his multi- 
farious employments, be painted doors "artistically," 
as well as drew in water-color, made boxes, invented 
a pair of swimming-shoes which would not work, turned 
his own chessmen on a lathe, produced a quadrant and 



WILLIAM BARNES 129 

an instrument to describe ellipses, and played the flute, 
violin, and piano. He had the fixed habit of bringing 
his notions to practical forms, and is found regulating 
the binding of his books and the margin and frames of 
his water-colors by "harmonic proportions"; and, to give 
one capital instance which does as well as any to put 
this aspect of his character before us, he adopted the 
theory that Nature never makes mistakes in colors, and 
that her juxtapositions must be the true harmonies, act- 
ing on which, he studied mosses, leaves, and fruits, and 
used the tints as arranged in them in his own sketching 
and decoration. Thus, on purchasing two old high- 
backed chairs, he chose for their covering "a certain gray- 
green damask, with a yellow-brown binding, the tints 
found on the upper and under side of a beautiful lichen." 
He had determined in the midst of all this on entering 
the church; and in 1837 put himself down on the books 
of St. John's College, Cambridge, as a ten years' man. 
At the end of that time, having meanwhile been a pro- 
lific author in the magazines and in books, he received a 
small cure of £13 value, three miles from his school, 
and held it for five years, walking out and back every 
Sunday. His life went on in this way with teaching 
and preaching, philology, antiquities, lectures in the coun- 
try, a diary in all languages, and poems in dialect, which 
had always been popular in the district and slowly at- 
tracted the attention of literary men at London. But 
hard times came to him, his wife was dead (in his 
polyglot journal he wrote her name at the end of each 
day's entry for forty years afterwards), his school de- 
clined, and it was a matter of rejoicing when Palmerston 
put him on the civil list with £70 pension. At last, 
when his friend Colonel Darner gave him the living at 



i 3 o LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Came in 1862, he found a home for his old age, and 
congenial employment until his death in 1886. As a 
rector he was much beloved, and went in and out among 
his people like one of them. His daughter tells of a 
woman saying to her, "There, miss, we do all of us love 
the passon, that we do; he be so plain. Why, bless you, 
I don't no more mind telling o' un all my little pains 
and troubles than if he was my grandmother. I don't 
mean any disrespec', miss"; and this story tells its own 
tale. He remained vigorous until near the end, and 
died in advanced age with the honor of the people among 
whom he lived and the respect of those in the larger world 
who knew his acquirements and talents. 

But his biography was written because he was a poet. 
The name philologist is also upon the title-page; his 
philological work, however, was cumbrous, and had in it 
elements of crankiness. It consisted of numberless 
writings, some of which brought him £5 for the copy- 
right, and some of which have never found a publisher 
at all. The opera majora in these are a "Universal 
Grammar of all Languages," an attempt at a rational 
formal analysis of speech which shall be true of each 
particular tongue or dialect; and secondly, 'Tiw,' an 
analytical scheme of roots and stems. He had also 
much at heart the reform of the English by eliminating 
all except Teutonic elements, and restoring to it such 
purity as the Welsh possesses; his practice of using in 
his later books only pure Teutonic words, numbers of 
which he was of course obliged to coin, with his habit of 
using figure-symbols, made them unreadable. Such are 
the traits of his philology. But his feeling for the plain 
and expressive quality, the homeliness, of country speech, 
to which his philological dreams were allied, is at the 



WILLIAM BARNES 131 

root of his extraordinary success as a poet in dialect. 
At the importunity of friends he translated some of these 
Dorset idyls into ordinary English speech, and the vol- 
ume had little success — quite rightly, for the charm 
was gone. In his English verses he did not exceed com- 
monplace. His poetic inspiration refused to flow except 
from the living rock of the speech of the country folk 
which had been familiar to his childhood. There is in 
all real dialect verse a certain correspondence of the 
feeling and the words, a fitness as inexplicable as that 
of a peasant's costume to his body, an adjustment of 
thought and burring inflections as perfect as is made in 
all things by use and wont; and this is the main element 
of their delight to the cultivated. All are reaches after 
harmony, but here is a harmony that seems before art, 
and comes to us like unbreathed-on nature. The pe- 
culiar forms are easily caught and understood, and they 
give the tang of life to the country manners which they 
are used to describe, to the simple sentiment and direct 
emotion which they convey. 

Barnes had poetic feeling of the primitive kind, and 
so long as he dealt with this Dorset life that was interest- 
ing and dear to him, and used its own century-molded 
vital speech, he wrote verses with a quality like the 
charm of a pastoral picture or the sight of the cows 
in the pool staring at you. These poems won him the 
attention of some London folk — Mrs. Norton among 
them, and a Mr. Tennant, whose letters to him are most 
pleasant in tact and temper; and after a while Patmore 
and Allingham became his friends, and Tennyson ex- 
changed visits with him. It is said here that the 
"Northern Farmer" was written under the stimulus of 
this incident. Palgrave praised Barnes very highly. 



132 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

"This aged poet seems to me to stand second only to 
Tennyson in the last half century. He has a truth 
united always to beauty in his drawing of character and 
country ways — a pure love of nature, such as one sees in 
the best Greek or Roman writers, exalted and rendered 
more tender by his devout Christian spirit. I know not, 
also, if any of our poets have surpassed him in the 
number of original pictures or motives which his three 
precious volumes display." There is something of the 
over-exquisite critic in this, but it should be said that 
Palgrave has since explained that, in placing Barnes 
"second only to Tennyson," he meant to class him "with, 
not above," our other poets "in the foremost line of 
those after Tennyson." Still, his remarks indicate well 
enough the lines of Barnes's excellence. The Bishop 
praised rather the influence of his life and words in his 
community: "He has helped the people hereabouts to 
feel what they can be and do." To write verses to please 
Mr. Palgrave's nice taste, and to have been helpful by 
them to the humble people of Dorset, is to cover a wide 
reach of life, one thinks; it is a test of the singleness 
and simplicity of poetic art. 

He was always eccentric, it seems, in dress. The 
poncho, the plaid, the flowing cassock, and silver buckles 
served in turn, but he was especially fond of a red cap, 
and perhaps it was a favorite color in other articles; 
at least it flashes out finely in this sketch of him by Mr. 
Gosse in a letter to Patmore: 

"Hardy and I went on Monday last to Came Rectory, 
where he lies bedridden. It is curious that he is dying as 
picturesquely as he lived. We found him in bed in his study, 
his face turned to the window, where the light came stream- 
ing in through flowering paints, his brown books on all sides 



WILLIAM BARNES 133 

of him save one, the wall behind him hung with old green 
tapestry. He had a scarlet bedgown on, a kind of soft biretta 
of red wool on his head, from which his long white hair 
escaped on to the pillow; his gray beard grown very long 
upon his breast; his complexion, which you recollect as richly 
bronzed., has become blanched by keeping indoors, and is 
now waxily white where it is not waxily pink; the blue eyes 
half shut, restless under languid lids. I wish I could paint 
for you the strange effect of this old, old man, lying in cardi- 
nal scarlet in his white bed, the only bright spot in the gloom 
of all these books." 



MR. RUSKIN'S EARLY YEARS 

An interesting article might be written upon the influ- 
ence of the novel upon modern autobiography. The 
novel has, indeed, affected literature in many ways, and 
been felt in both history and poetry; but the taste which 
it has bred in the incidents and characters of ordinary 
life has given a great extension to the scope of a man's 
account of his own career. It would hardly have oc- 
curred to our elder authors to delineate their parents in 
the way that Carlyle drew his father and mother, or to 
introduce into their reminiscences finished portraits of 
any persons who had not won some distinction. Gib- 
bon's autobiography is a capital instance of a life told 
without the setting which has now become usual; it has 
no such background. In the papers which Ruskin has 
written about his early years, there is no like reserve. 
He includes in them his family and all his relatives, the 
home acquaintances and business partners, the clerks of 
the firm and the servants of the house, his companions 
and valets; the work, in other words, is conceived in the 
new spirit of autobiography, and though he is the hero, 
there are a host of minor characters and a crowd of triv- 
ial incidents which in other days would not have been 
thought worthy of record. It appeals often, like the 
novel, to our interest in general life as much as to our 
curiosity about Ruskin in his distinct personality. 

In these pages, too, Ruskin is an ungrown youth; 
his account hardly touches on his active career, and 

. 135 



i 3 6 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

nowhere reaches his maturity. The formative years of 
life are, in a sense, very important, but they are at best 
only the preface; what the man at last became and ac- 
complished is the matter that is worth knowing, unless 
one is specially concerned with education; the question 
how he was developed is subsidiary. The narrative is 
much taken up with childish and futile things, and does 
not show the sources of Ruskin's genius, but the con- 
ditions under which he grew; and these were such as to 
account more for his defects than his excellences. A 
great part of what is told is indeed entirely irrelevant, 
and would have been as interesting in any other man's 
life. One or two leading topics, however, may be chosen, 
which have most bearing on his qualities, and either illus- 
trate his temperament, or seem to have been determining 
factors in his character; and the principal of these is his 
religious training. Ruskin himself lays great stress on 
the fact that his mother made him early acquainted 
with the Bible; she read it with him for years, and went 
through it in course several times, besides obliging him 
to commit chapters of it, and the Scotch versions of the 
psalms in addition. He was, as one would say, piously 
trained; the exercise was strenuous while it lasted, and 
it ended only with his fourteenth year. He thinks it 
formed and confirmed a taste for the noble element in 
style, and that it was also morally of great effect. He 
was an only child, and a solitary one; this, no doubt, had 
an influence in lending solemnity to his religious asso- 
ciations, and his beliefs were not early disturbed. When 
he went to Oxford, the steady Bible-reading had ended, 
and in its place, he says, "was substituted my own pri- 
vate reading of a chapter morning and evening, and of 
course saying the Lord's Prayer after it, and asking for 



MR. RUSKIN'S EARLY YEARS 137 

everything that was nice for myself and my family; 
after which I waked or slept, without much thought of 
anything but my earthly affairs, whether by night or day. 
It had never entered into my head to doubt a word of 
the Bible, though I saw well enough already that its 
words were to be understood otherwise than I had been 
taught; but the more I believed it, the less it did me 
any good. It was all very well for Abraham to do what 
angels bid him — so would I, if any angels bid me; but 
none had ever appeared to me that I knew of, not even 
Adele, who couldn't be an angel because she was a Ro- 
man Catholic. ... On the whole, it seemed to me 
all that was required of me was to say my prayers, go 
to church, learn my lessons, obey my parents, and enjoy 
my dinner." His religious training had accomplished no 
more than to put him in possession of the Protestant 
tradition. It was some years after, when he was twenty- 
six, that he was first "put to any serious trial of prayer." 
He had been ill, and was now going home from Italy. 
"Between the Campo Santo and Santa Maria Novella I 
had been brought into some knowledge of the relations 
that might truly exist between God and his creatures; 
and thinking what my father and mother would feel if 
I did not get home to them through those poplar avenues, 
I fell gradually into the temper, and more or less tacit 
offering of very real prayer, which lasted patiently 
through two long days and what I knew of the nights 
on the road home. On the third day, as I was about 
coming in sight of Paris, what people who are in the 
habit of praying know as the consciousness of answer 
came to me, and a certainty that the illness, which had 
all this while increased, if anything, would be taken 
away." Two days after, he found himself "in the inn 



138 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

at Beauvais, entirely well, with a thrill of conscious 
happiness altogether new." This is the solitary instance 
of personal religious feeling in the volume, and appar- 
ently from Ruskin's comment upon the incident, it was 
one never repeated. To what extent his religious train- 
ing fortified his moral fervor, besides enabling him to 
enter into the medieval feeling in sacred art, is another 
matter; but the tone of the passages cited show that he 
holds mentally an attitude of superiority toward common 
Christian belief and devotions. 

A second main characteristic of his education was his 
separation from healthy association with those of his own 
age, the care with which he was kept from youthful 
exercises, and, in general, the making a home-boy of 
him. He was not at all indulged; most playthings were 
denied him; he was taught to be proper, his faults were 
followed by the usual penalties, and he seems to have 
been reduced to an extremely angelic docility, so that 
he sat for years in a quiet manner in his own niche in 
the drawing-room, listening every evening to his father 
reading romance and poetry to his mother, and no more 
thinking of doing anything disagreeable than a star of 
falling from heaven. But, more than this, the parents 
had plans for him as a child of promise, for which the 
sherry trade would not afford sufficient scope. Their 
conviction of his genius was formed early and grew with 
portentous rapidity, and his father's ideal for his future 
was "that I should enter college into the best society; 
take all the prizes every year, and a double first to 
finish with; marry Lady Clara Vere de Vere; write 
poetry as good as Byron's, only pious; preach sermons 
as good as Bossuet's, only Protestant; be made at forty 
Bishop of Winchester, and at fifty Primate of England." 



MR. RUSKIN'S EARLY YEARS 139 

The ideal was not so denned as this until he was ready 
for Oxford, but the vision of the future bishop seems 
to have loomed up while the child was of very tender 
years, and it was reluctantly let go. There is one rem- 
iniscence of the disappointment here, on occasion of a 
conversation between his father and an artist, who were 
lamenting "what an amiable clergyman was lost in me. 
'Yes/ said my father, with tears in his eyes (true and 
tender tears as ever father shed), 'he would have been 
a bishop.' " Between the idea that the child was to be 
a great man and the foolish isolation of him from natural 
playmates, a remarkable conceit was developed, which 
Ruskin is only too frank in acknowledging; he heaps 
terms of ridicule upon his childish self, and the reader 
is not disposed to say him nay, but rather to find it 
a great misfortune of his life that his vanity was 
coddled in a safe seclusion from the disillusions of a 
public school. But it is curious, side by side with these 
comic anathemas on his boyish "High-Mightiness," to 
come upon the mature judgments he has formed of him- 
self, and does not hesitate to proclaim; he never learned 
the lesson of modesty, nor did perception of his childish 
faults enlighten him in respect to weaknesses of his man- 
hood. He quotes Mazzini as having said of him, "in con- 
versation authentically reported a year or two before 
his death, that I had 'the most analytic mind in Europe'; 
an opinion in which," he adds, "so far as I am acquainted 
with Europe, I am myself entirely disposed to concur." 
Elsewhere he deplores the loss in him of "a fine land- 
scape or figure-outline engraver," but this loss he mourns 
less than "the incalculable one to geology;" for, he says, 
if, in Wales, his father and mother "had given me but 
a shaggy scrap of a Welsh pony, and left me in charge 



140 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

of a good Welsh guide and of his wife, if I needed any 
coddling, they would have made a man of me then and 
there, and afterwards the comfort of their own hearts, 
and probably the first geologist of my time in Europe." 
It was lucky that they did not try to make him an 
ichthyologist, at any rate. When he got the "Poissons 
Fossiles," he saw that "Agassiz was a mere blockhead to 
have paid for all that good drawing of the nasty, ugly 
things, and that it didn't matter a stale herring to any 
mortal whether they had any names or not, . . . and 
that the book ought to have been called after the lithog- 
rapher, his fishes, only with their scales counted and 
called bad names by subservient Monsieur Agassiz." 
This is a mere explosion of bad temper, but it helps us 
to guess what sort of "a first geologist of Europe" he 
would have been, and to reckon how he would have 
fared pitted against Lyell. It may be doubted, too, 
whether he would have kept very long to the manage- 
ment of that wished-for Welsh pony: the parents did 
try to have him taught riding, both by a groom and at 
a riding-school, but he had too much facility in slipping 
off, and was evidently entirely disinclined to learn. 

The isolation of his childhood no doubt threw him 
back upon himself and induced his precocity. Stevenson 
remarked upon one virtue of the Scotch Sabbath, in 
that it made a boy who could not employ himself in his 
usual play think out of mere idleness, and the time 
being a solemn one his thoughts were touched by it. 
Mr. Ruskin's every-day life was such a Scotch Sabbath. 
It was empty of most young interests, affections, and 
amusements. Listening to his father's readings from 
Scott, and Cervantes, and Byron, the boy naturally took 
to literature in imitative verse and prose, just as he wrote 



MR. RUSKIN'S EARLY YEARS 141 

abstracts of sermons that he had heard preached; and 
he also took to drawing in a similarly obvious way. 
Whatever literary or artistic talent was possible in him 
was bound to come out under such circumstances, and 
power of expression would grow with practice; and so 
those first signs of promise put forth which confirmed his 
parents' ambition for him as a piously Byronic bishop. 
This was the compensation for what he lost, but what 
he lost was never to be recovered, for all that; and the 
worst of his loss, besides practical faculty and habits 
of manliness, was the exercise of his affections. He has 
cared throughout his life, he says — and this is certainly 
true of his earlier career — for inanimate things, moun- 
tains and clouds chiefly; and one reason of this is, that 
he, to use his own words, "had nothing to love" in his 
childhood and youth, and indeed did not love anything; 
for his affection for his parents was not of the intimate 
kind, and he looked on them as a part of the benefi- 
cent universe, like the sun and the moon. This is his 
own account of the matter; and he regrets the circum- 
stance, curiously enough, not because of such results 
as we have indicated, but because, when he fell in love 
with that Adele who "couldn't be an angel because she 
was a Roman Catholic," he did not know how to manage 
himself. His confession of this first fit of amorousness 
is one of the oddest things in the volumes, and indeed 
all his references to the various maidens who attracted 
his roving fancy, or his parents' more prudent eyes, are 
astonishing. Adele was a bright Spanish girl, the daugh- 
ter of his father's partner in sherry, and knew a great 
deal more than her adorer, who fell in love with her while 
she was visiting the Ruskins, and found the course of his 
malady rapid and severe. He wooed her by displaying 



i 4 2 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

his powers in Protestant argument and romantic narra- 
tive, and by his bad French; but she was only amused, and 
the lover, who was still young in his teens, was discon- 
solate in the old fashion. It was some years before he 
recovered from the disease; and reminiscences of the 
time seem to be disagreeable enough, for he rivals his 
contempt for his childish conceit by his ridicule of him- 
self as a lovesick youth. There is nothing in the story, 
however, that excites the reader's pity; in this, as well 
as the other cases, one fcas a pleased sense of listening 
to much youthful confession in which there is not the 
least seriousness. The feeling was real enough, but it 
was "fancy," as we say, and not passion, with all the 
unreality of sentimentalism in the traditional spring. 
Oxford apparently cured him — change of scene and 
something to think about. 

But Ruskin is only a small part of the story; and one 
is not sorry that this is the case, for he was not an in- 
teresting child, and his boyhood was without the quali- 
ties that make boyhood attractive. The scenes in which 
he lived, however, and the people with whom he dwelt 
are drawn by the hand of the grown man, and have more 
of himself in them than has the manikin he then was. 
The banks of the Tay and the humble relatives at Croy- 
don help his narrative very much, not to mention the 
view of the Alps from Schaffhausen, where he thinks 
his destiny was determined for him at fourteen, or the 
days in the Campo Santo, or the revelation of the in- 
fernal in life that the volcanic Neapolitan country was to 
him, in his own belief; at first sight. The journeys with 
his parents exhibit their character very pleasantly, and 
they were excellent persons; their devotion to their son 
was entire, and he was at times a trying young man. 






MR. RUSKIN'S EARLY YEARS 143 

The first acquaintance with Turner, and the gradually 
increasing interest of the family, not only in his work, 
but in artists generally, furnish agreeable passages; the 
fortunes of the servants and other connections of the 
family, and the sketches of the acquaintance of the 
household who used occasionally to visit them, are in- 
teresting in the way of episode, though the manner is 
somewhat Carlylean, too grim, too indifferent, too con- 
sciously superior. Oxford yields one good chapter, and, 
as was to be anticipated in the case of a youth such as 
we have intimated Ruskin was, it is not without humor. 
He entered as a gentleman commoner, that being the 
safest mode of entrance for one with his weak scholar- 
ship, and one attractive to him and his parents because 
he would wear a velvet cap and silk sleeves, incredible 
as it seems that this should have been, as he says, a 
"telling consideration," even to the largest importer of 
sherry and his scriptual wife and heir. His aristocratic 
mates took his measure and received him very well; and 
his mother coming down to live in the city, to be near 
in case he should be ill, he spent his evenings with her, 
and apparently did not annoy any one with his frequent 
presence elsewhere. He was fortunate enough, too, to 
be taken up by Henry Acland, his senior by a year and 
a half, whose rooms "became to me," he says, "the only 
place where I was happy. He quietly showed me the 
manner of life of English youth of good sense, good 
family, and enlarged education; we both of us already 
lived in elements far external to the college quadrangle." 
And he later completes the picture of Acland's man- 
liness, in whom he saw " a noble young English life in 
its purity, sagacity, honor, reckless daring, and happy 
piety," by contrasting him with himself in his own less 



i 4 4 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

hardy fiber, and showing at the same time the point 
of sympathy: "In all this playful and proud heroism 
of his youth, Henry Acland delighted me as a leopard or 
a falcon would, without in the least affecting my own 
character by his example. I had been too often ad- 
jured and commanded to take care of myself ever to 
think of following him over slippery weirs, or accom- 
panying him in pilot-boats through white-topped shoal 
water; but both in art and science he would pull me on, 
being years ahead of me, yet glad of my sympathy, for, 
till I came, he was literally alone in the university in 
caring for either." Such glimpses of open, honest life 
on entirely natural and wise terms are not frequent in 
these pages, but some there are, and they help the in- 
terest. There is a considerable proportion, too, of Tur- 
nerian rhetoric about the Alps and Italy, of which the 
novelty has passed away and only the diffuseness re- 
mains; and there is something of interest in the history 
of Ruskin's artistic taste through Prout, rejecting 
Raphael by the way, to the Campo Santo and the Santa 
Maria Novella, but this record is already written in 
his earlier books 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 

I 

In Carlyle's "Reminiscences" are etched the lineaments 
of many persons, obscure or notable, particularly of the 
author's relatives, and of Irving, Jeffrey, Southey, 
and Wordsworth. Occasionally, as comment on these 
sketches, sparse literary criticism is furnished, and at 
intervals a random flash or two of the old fire flares out; 
but the volume has most interest as a fragmentary auto- 
biography, and most value in furthering our acquaint- 
ance with Carlyle. It is an old man who is talking, 
depressed with calamity (the moaning ay de mi! too 
constant, too painful), garrulous, but with the secure 
and confiding garrulity of long fireside converse. The 
cumbersome detail, however, is not useless, especially 
that concerning his diversely branching genealogy; it is 
no new thing to indicate the debt of his genius to a 
Scotch extraction, but this avuncular anecdotage marks 
out the obligation sharply, and registers him as born in 
the savage and brawling border-land, lately reclaimed 
to civility and orderliness — his father, as he writes, "of 
the second race of religious men in Annandale." But 
his father did more than transmit to him a hardy strain 
of blood: special traits in the taciturn, fearless, toiling, 
half-loved, half-feared, farmer-mason — his gift of lively, 
picturesque portraiture, his intensity of isolated emotion, 
his somber veneration — are recognizably the son's in- 

145 



146 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

heritance; and spiritual fraternity shines unmistakably 
in this, which was one of his last sayings to his still 
obscure, though man-grown child: "Man, it's surely a 
pity that thou shouldst sit yonder with nothing but the 
eye of Omniscience to see thee, and thou with such a 
gift to speak!" A noble type of peasanthood, worth 
recording in this loving sketch of him. 

The ineffaceable impression left by these records as a 
whole is of the habitual solitude in which Carlyle dwelt, 
and of the fierceness, almost ferocity, of the struggle that 
went on in it. Not merely in youth — "life tinted with 
hues of imprisonment and impossibility, hope practically 
not there, only obstinacy and a grim steadfastness to 
strive without hope as with"; not merely in the appren- 
ticeship time — "nightly working at the thing [Schiller] 
in a serious, sad, and totally solitary way"; but through- 
out active life at least, the delirious depression of spirit 
and intensity of effort, from which youthful genius, un- 
certain of its own faculty and of the world's opportunity, 
is seldom relieved, haunted him. He seized upon his 
work with a tenacity well-nigh savage, and his work held 
him like a spell of evil. During the French Revolution 
period, for example, he describes himself as taking his 
daily afternoon walk, "always heavy laden, grim of 
mood, sometimes with a feeling (not rebellious or im- 
pious toward God Most High), but otherwise too similar 
to Satan's stepping the burning marl. Once or twice, 
among the flood of equipages at Hyde Park corner, I 
recollect sternly thinking, 'Yes; and perhaps none of you 
could do what I am at.' But generally my feeling was, 
'I shall finish this book, throw it at your feet, buy a 
rifle and spade, and withdraw to the transatlantic wilder- 
ness, far from human beggaries and basenesses.' " For 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 147 

three years "that grim book" held him "in a fever blaze"; 
at the end he stood leaning against a mile-stone, with his 
face toward Annan, whither he had gone to soothe his 
"wild excitation of nerves," his purpose to write the book, 
though he should die, accomplished. "Words cannot 
utter the wild and ghastly expressiveness of that scene 
to me ; it seemed as if Hades itself and the gloomy realms 
of death and eternity were looking out on me through 
those poor old familiar objects." 

The thirteen years of "Friedrich" were not different 
"a desperate dead-lift pull all that time, my whole 
strength devoted to it; alone, withdrawn from all the 
world, and desperate of ever getting through (not to 
speak of 'succeeding' ; left solitary 'with the nightmares' 
(as I sometimes expressed it) ; 'hugging unclean crea- 
tures' (Prussian blockheadism) 'to my bosom, trying to 
caress and flatter their secret out of them!' " In such a 
fashion, with no repose in the idea, no ease in the utter- 
ance, he struggled on alone, except for the constant at- 
tendance of "the desperate hope," until he got some re- 
sponse to his questionings; not winning it by any 
gracious Prospero serenity, but rather extorting the 
secret by putting his own life upon the rack. 

The answer, however, was sufficient for himself, and 
has proved helpful to others. The ideal of conduct and 
formula of excellence he reached made him indifferent 
to the world's verdict upon his life or his works. If the 
world judged not by his standards, its judgments were 
hollow. At first he had not been so wholly careless ; but 
the "conscript fathers" of literature were silent. From 
the six copies of "poor Sartor" sent to six Edinburgh 
literary friends he got "no smallest whisper, even of 
receipt — a thing which," he grimly adds, " has silently 



148 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

and insensibly led me never since to send any copy of a 
book to Edinburgh, or, indeed, to Scotland at all, except 
in unliterary cases." He was thus forced to a self- 
reliance not difficult for his nature; and so, when Thacke- 
ray praised him in the "Times," "one other poor judge 
voting," he thought, "but what is he or such as he?" 
The only true criticism for him, respecting that French 
Revolution specter-drama, was his own to his wife: 
"What they will do with this book none knows, 
my Jeannie, lass; but they have not had for a two 
hundred years any book that came more truly from 
a man's very heart, and so let them trample it under 
foot and hoof as they see best!" His final feeling 
towards his works and their value to the world is shown 
by this remark on the "Friedrich": "It has now become 
Koirpos to me, insignificant as the dung of a thousand 
centuries ago. I did get through, thank God! Let it 
now wander into the belly of oblivion forever!" 

The world's standards were not for him; nevertheless, 
his standards were for all the world. His equanimity in 
applying them would resemble that of the careless gods, 
were his humor not so undeniably atrabiliar, in conse- 
quence of which a greater number of fools, bores, and 
blockheads are here set down by name than would have 
been found in one of his own little German courts. This 
pinning of flies in a posthumous work, with a constant 
"See! this is a fly!" — why, even the sentimental "Get 
thee gone, poor devil!" is better stuff. As each nonen- 
tity pops into the field of vision and collapses, there comes 
into the mind "Jeannie's" old grandfather, and how he 
made each new acquaintance stand up to be measured, 
inches being infallibly indicative of worth, and one falls 
to thinking of the futility of all standards that disregard 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 149 

specific faculty and opportunity even in the humblest. 
Nor is the mensuration flawless when these tests are ap- 
plied to the celebrities whom our author knew. To bor- 
row his description of Wordsworth's delineations, these 
men are seen "only as through the reversed telescope, 
and reduced to the size of a mouse and its nest, or little 
more." This, of De Quincey, is one of the best of such 
pictures: "One of the smallest man figures I ever saw; 
shaped like a pair of tongs, and hardly above five feet 
in all. When he sate, you would have taken him, by 
candle-light, for the beautifullest little child, blue-eyed, 
sparkling face, had there not been a something, too, 
which said, 'Eccovi — this child has been in hell.' " 
Etched work, as has been observed above; the acid has 
bitten in; the chief result is an effect. Take this of 
Leigh Hunt, for a pleasanter sort: "Dark complexion, 
copious, clean, strong, black hair, beautifully shaped 
head, fine, beaming, serious hazel eyes; seriousness and 
intellect the main expression of the face. He would lean 
on his elbow against the mantel-piece (fine, clean, elastic 
figure, too, he had, five feet ten or more), and look round 
him nearly in silence before taking leave for the night; 
'as if I were a Lar,' said he once, 'or permanent house- 
hold god here' (such his polite, aerial-like way)." 
Were all these sketches as admirable, there could be only 
thankfulness for such naturalness, force, veracity; but 
when his mind estimates while his eye sees, when he 
mixes judgment with his drawing — in Coleridge, Mill, 
Lamb — there is blur and error, ending often lamely 
and impotently in grotesque results. In singular con- 
trast with this inability of Carlyle to distribute exact 
justice to men, either nobodies or notorieties, is his appre- 
ciation of those nearest to him : his father, whose natural 



150 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

endowment, he thinks, possibly greater than Robert 
Burns's, and his wife, who exceeded, it seemed to him, 
"all the Sands and Eliots and babbling coterie of cele- 
brated scribbling women that have strutted over the 
world in my time, if all boiled down and distilled to 
essence." In his exceeding solitariness it seemed so; 
for what with his fever and battle, the sufficiency to him 
of the solution he gave the sphinx riddle, his trust in 
his standards of work done and thrusting itself on the 
senses, life lost to his eye its true relief; all fine and 
various proportions vanished in exaggerations and dimi- 
nutions. In what further and worse obscurities he was 
involved when he passed from the individual to the 
mass of humanity, in "Latter-Day Pamphlets" and the like, 
these records show little sign, except for an outbreak 
about the "beautiful nigger agony" and a quaver over 
"poor Davis." 

He taught us much, but at the end he stood in a 
tragic isolation from the men in whom the fire of his 
thought burned most clearly. He denounced their aims, 
he put their hopes from him; the trend of the new civil- 
ization, with its democracies, its philanthropies, its pros- 
perities, was, it seemed to him, downward to the pit, 
and he sang his Tiresiad to the last. These autobiographic 
fragments, however, do something to disclose, though 
darkly, a unity that explains the denouement of his 
career. So to speak, his own nature imprisoned him, 
his own effort obstructed him, his own development 
dwarfed him. "A haggard existence, that of his," said 
he to Southey of Shelley. His own existence was grim 
and gaunt, a wrestling with far other than the angel of 
the Lord; with dark spirits, indeed, "as of a man [it is 
his own account] shrouded since youthhood in continual 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 151 

gloom and grimness, set too nakedly versus the devil and 
all men." His struggle was heroic, and fruitful of spirit- 
ual good to men; however defective in joy, in humanity, 
in repose, his life now takes its place among the noblest 
of English men of letters. 



II 

That one day which Emerson made "look like en- 
chantment," in the poor house of the lonely hill-country 
where Carlyle was biding his time, may well be reckoned 
memorable and fortunate in the annals of literature. It 
knit together, at the beginning of their career, the two 
men who were to give, each in his own land, the most 
significant and impressive utterance of spiritual truth 
in their age. Mutual respect and open sympathy arose 
in their hearts at first sight, and soon became a loyal 
and trustful affection, which, endeared by use and wont, 
proved for almost fifty years one of the best earthly 
possessions that fell to their lot. Throughout this 
period, except for a few brief weeks, they lived separate, 
and hence their correspondence is a nearly complete 
record of their friendship as it was expressed in words 
and acts. On our side of the ocean was Emerson, at 
Concord: freed from pressing care by his competency 
of twenty thousand dollars; serene in his philosophy of 
"acquiescence and optimism"; working in his garden 
or walking by Walden Pond ; discovering geniuses among 
the townspeople; lecturing in the neighborhood, or jot- 
ting down essays for his readers — "men and women 
of some religious culture and aspirations, young or else 
mystical." On the other side was Carlyle, "the poorest 



I S 2 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

man in London"; hag-ridden by spirits of revolt and 
despair; wrestling with his books as with the demon, 
"in desperate hope"; finding the face of nature spec- 
tral, and the face of man tragically burlesque; saying 
to himself, "Surely, if ever man had a finger-of-Provi- 
dence shown him, thou hast it; literature will neither 
yield the bread nor a stomach to digest bread with; quit 
it in God's name — shouldst thou take spade and mat- 
tock instead"; yet heartening himself with his mother's 
words, "They cannot take God's providence from thee." 
The letters of these two friends, so sharply contrasted by 
circumstances and nature, must be, one thinks, of ex- 
traordinary interest, and possibly some wonder may 
spring up at finding the talk in them about every-day 
matters — family, work, business, friends, and the like; 
but the special charm of the correspondence lies in this 
fact, in its being human rather than literary, in its 
naturalness of speech, man to man, whether the theme, 
in Emerson's phrase, "savor of eternity," or concern 
the proper mode of cooking Indian meal. 

There is much about "a New England book," as Car- 
lyle, putting Old England to the blush, called it — "Sartor 
Resartus" — and of its welcome to Cape Cod and Boston 
Bay, which made Fraser "shriek." We are proud of 
that; and now we can be glad to know of the money that 
went to Carlyle from us for this and other books, when 
he needed money, and can feel a sympathetic indignation 
against the "gibbetless thief," whose piracies troubled 
Emerson in his good work, even though we get a cheap 
satisfaction in knowing that a "brother corsair" in Eng- 
land did the like when Carlyle tried to reciprocate his 
friend's good offices. There is much, too, about Car- 
lyle's coming to America to lecture: details of probable 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 153 

costs and profits; assurances that, advertised as "the 
personal friend of Goethe," he would, merely "for the 
name's sake," be "certain of success for one winter, but 
not afterwards"; congratulations that "Dr. Channing 
reads and respects you, a fact of importance"; probabil- 
ities of "the cordial opposition" of the university. (Ah, 
poor Harvard! But what can be expected from a son 
of thine who writes, "The educated class are of course 
less fair-minded than others"?) Nothing came of all 
this, though Carlyle did not yield his wish to visit us until 
he was an old man. Glimpses of humorous sights and 
things are given from the first: of Dr. Furness, "feeding 
Miss Martineau with the 'Sartor';" of "Alcott's English 
Tail of bottomless imbeciles" in London; of Brook Farm 
days — "not a reading man but has a draft of a new 
Community in his waistcoat pocket"; of Carlyle him- 
self (a sight, one would think, to stir Rabelaisian laugh- 
ter) at a water-cure — "wet wrappages, solitary sad 
steepages, and other singular procedures." Nov/ and 
then, too, they praise each other, as friends should. 
Thus Carlyle, on reading the Phi Beta Kappa oration, 
breaks out, "I could have wept to read that speech; the 
clear high melody of it went tingling through my heart. I 
said to my wife, 'There, woman! ' " But they praise with 
reservations, as befitted their independence and differ- 
ences. Carlyle is shy of his friend's genius as of a 
possible will-o'-the-wisp (beautiful, but leading whither?), 
and Emerson looks askance at the Harlequinries of his 
"Teufelsdrockh." They confide their bereavements to each 
other, simply, manfully: now it is Emerson's little boy, 
"the bud of God," who is gone; and so on it is Carlyle's 
tenderly loved mother, and at last the wife. They send 
their friends to each other — Emerson, of course, by far 



1 54 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

the larger number — and they talk them over. In these 
criticisms and characterizations is the principal literary 
interest of the collection. Most of them are by Carlyle, 
and they exhibit the same power as similar passages of 
his "Reminiscences," but more wisely used. 

Here is Alcott, whom Emerson had sent on "with his 
more than a prophet's egotism, a great man if he cannot 
write well"; whom Carlyle found "a genial, innocent, 
simple-hearted man, of much natural intelligence and 
goodness, with an air of rusticity, veracity, and dignity 
— the good Alcott, with his long, lean face and figure, 
with his gray-worn temples and mild, radiant eyes, all 
bent on saving the world by a return to acorns and the 
golden age; ... let him love me as he can, and live 
on vegetables in peace, and I living partly on vegetables 
will continue to love him!" Margaret Fuller, Emerson 
describes as "without beauty or genius," — "with a cer- 
tain wealth and generosity of nature." Carlyle had 
larger language for her: "Such a predetermination to 
eat this big Universe as her oyster or her egg, and to be 
absolute empress of all height and glory in it that her 
heart could conceive, I have not before seen in any 
human soul. Her c mountain-me/ indeed! — but her 
courage, too, is high and clear, her chivalrous nobleness 
indeed is great, her veracity in its deepest sense a toute 
epreuve." In briefer strokes, Miss Martineau, "swathed 
like a mummy into Socinian and Political-Economy form- 
ulas, and yet verily alive in the inside of that"; the 
"pretty little robin-red-breast of a man," Lord Hough- 
ton; Dr. Hedge — "a face like a rock; a voice like a 
howitzer"; Southey — "the shovel-hat is grown to him"; 
Macready, who "puts to shame our Bishops and Arch- 
bishops." The list is a long one, and it is pleasing to 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 155 

notice that Carlyle recognizes and appreciates good quali- 
ties in those of whom he writes. Two more of these por- 
traits cannot be spared. Of Webster he writes, "As 
a Logic-fencer, Advocate, or Parliamentary Hercules, 
one would incline to back him at first sight against all the 
extant world. The tanned complexion, that amorphous, 
crag-like face, the dull black eyes under their precipice 
of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces, needing only to 
be blown, the mastiff-mouth accurately closed — I have 
not traced so much of silent Berserkir rage that I remem- 
ber of in any other man." Finally, of Tennyson, before 
he was taken up "in the top of the wave," — "Alfred is 
one of the few British or Foreign Figures who are and 
remain beautiful to me; a true human soul, or some 
authentic approximation thereto, to whom your own soul 
can say, Brother! ... a man solitary and sad as 
certain men are, dwelling in an element of gloom. . . . 
One of the finest-looking men in the world; a great shock 
of rough, dusty-dark hair; bright-laughing hazel eyes; 
massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate; 
of swallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; 
clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy; smokes infinite 
tobacco. His voice is musical metallic — fit for loud 
laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; 
speech and speculation free and plenteous. I do not 
meet, in these late decades, such company over a pipe." 
Elsewhere, with the Carlyle touch, "He wants a task!" 

Year by year these letters go, and "the cleft of differ- 
ence" grows wider between the two: Carlyle glowing 
more intense with the heat of a dark realism; Emerson 
becoming more ethereal in his ideality. Their mutual 
recognition is as generous as ever, but each wishes the 
other different. Carlyle calls for "some concretion of 






1 56 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

these beautiful abstracta." "I love your 'Dial,' " he 
writes, "and yet it is with a kind of shudder. You seem to 
me in danger of dividing yourselves from the Fact of this 
present Universe, and soaring away after Ideas, Beliefs, 
Revelations, and such like — into perilous altitudes be- 
yond the curve of perpetual frost. . . . I do believe, 
for one thing, a man has no right to say to his own 
generation, turning quite away from it, 'Be damned!' 
It is the whole Past and the whole Future, this same 
cotton-spinning, dollar-hunting, canting and shrieking, 
very wretched generation of ours. Come back into it, 
I tell you." Again and again he repeats his warning, 
and calls, "Come down and help us." Emerson, on his 
side, speaks his own discontent with "that spendthrift 
style of yours," those "sky-vaultings," and the like, but 
easily tolerates his friend's peculiarities, and at last takes 
him as "a highly virtuous gentleman who swears"; while 
to the summons to leave the mountain-tops, and "come 
down," he replies, "I don't know what you mean." The 
genius of each dominated him, and the world has not lost 
thereby. In the style of the one there was the aroma of 
Babylon, and in that of the other something of the day- 
dawn, as they said in their genuine compliments; but 
the two men could coalesce as little as would the two 
metaphors. They advanced in age, and the letters grew 
more infrequent: the fault was Emerson's. It is pitiful 
to read Carlyle's appeals against his friend's silence, the 
silence of that voice which was to him, he says over 
and over, the only human voice he ever heard in response 
to his own soul. He was wandering about his native 
country with that "fatal talent of converting all nature 
into Pret.ernaturalism," or standing in Luther's room in 
the Wartburg — "I believe I actually had tears in my 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 157 

eyes there, and kissed the old oak table"; or he was 
struggling with "Friedrich," and ever repeating, "I am 
lonely — I am lonely." At the end of a long, impas- 
sioned protest (and the passion is next to tears) against 
the misapprehension of the phrase of "the eighteen mil- 
lion fools," he first makes his prayer, "O my Friend, have 
tolerance for me, have sympathy with me!" Again, 
as early as 1852, he writes, "My manifold sins against 
you, involuntary all of them, I may well say, are often 
enough present to my sad thoughts; and a kind of re- 
morse is mixed with the other sorrow — as if I could have 
helped growing to be, by aid of time and destiny, the 
grim Ishmaelite I am, and so shocking your serenity 
by my ferocities ! I admit you were like an angel to me, 
and absorbed in the beautifulest manner all thunder- 
clouds into the depths of your immeasurable ether; and 
it is indubitable I love you very well, and have long 
done, and mean to do. And on the whole you will have 
to rally yourself into some kind of correspondence with 
me again. To me, at any rate, it is a great want, and 
adds perceptibly to the sternness of these years; deep as 
is my dissent from your Gymnosophist view of Heaven 
and Earth, I find an agreement that swallows up all con- 
ceivable dissents." But the letters remained long un- 
answered upon Emerson's table, in spite of this and other 
like appeals; he had forgotten his early words, "Please 
God, I will never again sit six weeks of this short human 
life over a letter of yours without answering it." When 
he does write he assures him of "the old love with the 
old limitations," counts it his "eminent happiness to have 
been your friend" and discoverer, and may well say, 
"There is no example of constancy like yours." The 
fact remains: Emerson appreciated love as the com- 



158 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

radeship of noble minds; but of the love that clings and 
yearns, and seeks only repose in the friend, he knew 
not. Every syllable he ever wrote of love or friendship 
is thought, not passion. Carlyle had the peasant's heart, 
the heart of a simple man; learning had not dried it, 
nor flattery hardened it, nor the charities of a fortunate 
life lulled it. He knew Emerson's fidelity; what he 
wanted was not the knowledge, but the sense of love. 
He was not to have it in the fullness he desired: he 
grew older and more lonely, and the letters fewer, until 
they ceased, ten years before the death of the friends, in 
the business necessary for the conveyance of Carlyle's 
bequest of books to Harvard College, in which he took 
great pleasure, as in "something itself connected with 
the Spring in a higher sense — a little white and red 
lipped bit of Daisy, pure and poor, scattered into 
Time's Seed-field." Here it seems fit to notice, once 
for all, the deep interest and friendliness of Carlyle 
tov/ard America, as it is shown throughout these letters. 
To quote but one or two phrases, America is at the be- 
ginning "the other parish" — "the Door of Hope to dis- 
tracted Europe." Of the subduing of the Western 
prairies he exclaims, "There is no myth of Athene or 
Herakles equal to that fact." Finally, at the close of all, 
he confesses, "I privately whisper to myself, 'Could any 
Friedrich Wilhelm, now, or Friedrich, or most perfect 
Governor you could hope to realize, guide forward what 
is America's essential task at present faster or more com- 
pletely than "anarchic America" herself is now doing?' 
Such "Anarchy" has a great deal to say for itself (would 
to Heaven ours of England had as much!), and points 
toward grand anti- Anarchies in the future; ... I 
hope, with the aid of centuries, immense things from 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 159 

it, in my private mind." Burke's famous admission, in 
his "Reflections on the French Revolution," that he might 
be wrong, after all, was not more creditable to his large 
wisdom than is this to Carlyle's deep sincerity. 

The reputation of Carlyle has materially gained by 
this "Correspondence," while Emerson remains the man 
we have always known. As in the "Reminiscences," we 
see again the grimness, the frightful intensity, the solitude, 
of Carlyle's life. It is marvelous to notice how exactly 
Carlyle's account of his states of feeling, written from 
memory, agrees with the contemporary record of the 
letters. But beyond what was told us before, we possess 
now clearer proofs of his sympathy and tenderness; his 
heart is laid bare, and we, being freed from the preju- 
dices stirred by the praise or blame that came from it in 
particular cases, can better appreciate his humanity. 
His genius was of that kind which makes misapprehension 
and hatred easy; this volume helps to show us the man 
as he truly was, one of the noblest of men. 



Ill 

The Goethe-Carlyle Correspondence has the character 
of a literary episode. It presents several aspects, all 
of them simple. The sight of Carlyle himself in an atti- 
tude of ordinary human respect toward a mortal creature 
still in the flesh is in itself a pleasing spectacle; and he 
is here to be observed in the postures of practical hero- 
worship. To Goethe, the writer, Carlyle believed him- 
self to be under great obligation for light upon the uni- 
versal mystery, and for counsel in the conduct of life; 
and to Goethe, the man, he accordingly expressed his 



160 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

fervent gratitude, as bright youths in similar circum- 
stances are so often tempted of the devil to do, by 
inditing a letter to the ruling genius of the hour under 
whose intellectual sway he happened to be born. In 
this case the usual unfortunate disillusion did not fol- 
low: the "spiritual father" showed himself truly paternal, 
smiled benignity upon the plans, fortunes, and various 
activities of the young man; and the "grateful son," in 
his turn, sent his tribute of translations, eulogistic crit- 
iques, and epistolary compliments to the sage at Weimar. 
The influence of Goethe certainly was the most powerful 
external stimulus in the literary life of Carlyle, and the 
friendly recognition which the latter received from the 
great man, while still obscure and unsuccessful, was no 
doubt a comfort, and perhaps a support; the gratitude 
of Carlyle was sincere, and his service to the fame of 
his master was considerable. But the relationship es- 
tablished by the Correspondence was personal, not intel- 
lectual; if one opens this volume with any expectation 
of finding wisdom in it, he will come to grief; that side 
of the connection must be sought in the works of the 
two authors. In these letters, they express their in- 
dividuality, not their genius; they are, on page after 
page, men leading an every-day life. 

To the fashion of our times there seems to be some- 
thing peculiar in the general tone of these letters, which 
is not altogether explained by reminding ourselves that 
of the two persons engaged one was old, the other young; 
one the oracular voice, the other an acolyte; one the 
shining great original, the other a Scotch translator. 
These differences do not account for what appears to be 
a lack of naturalness, or at least of that openness which 
is the charm of familiar literary correspondence. This 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 161 

Correspondence is very literary, but more formal than 
familiar: the principal figure in it is the monarch of 
literary Europe, who is also a court chamberlain; and 
both the participants are aware of the value of ceremony 
in adjusting human relations. The consequence is, to 
be frank, that Goethe is undeniably heavy in his com- 
munications, and Carlyle is preternaturally solemn, even 
for a young Scotchman of his severe ilk. Goethe's 
heaviness is unquestionably natural ; but, quite as plainly, 
Carlyle is minding his manners. One rubs his eyes, and 
asks if this is the Carlyle we know. How much he was 
warped from his native bent it is easy to observe by the 
contrast of the few contemporary letters to personal 
friends which interleave the main Correspondence. In 
them he speaks out like a man; but in reading the others, 
and especially the earlier of them, one is reminded of 
nothing so often as of the dedicatory epistles to that by- 
gone worthy, over whose disestablishment by Johnson 
Carlyle rejoiced — the Patron. As to the documentary 
missives that came from Weimar, Carlyle himself kept 
up a silent thinking. What does he say confidentially 
to brother John, now on his travels, and possibly to be 
in the actual presence of the great man? 

"To a certainty you must come round by Weimar, as 
you return, and see this world's wonder, and tell us on 
your sincerity what manner of man he is, for daily he 
grows more inexplicable to me. One letter is written 
like an oracle, the next shall be too redolent of twaddle. 
How is it that the author of "Faust" and "Meister" can 

tryste himself with such characters as 'Herr ' (the 

simplest and stupidest man of his day, a Westmoreland 

Gerundgrinder and cleishbotham) and ' Captain ' 

(a little wizened, cleanly man, most musical, most melan- 



1 62 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

choly)? . . . For myself, unshaken in my former 
belief, though Jane rather wavers," etc. 

"Twaddle"! But whether it was the curious testi- 
monial of Carlyle's fitness to be a Scotch professor, which 
he had just received, and which is the most Shandean 
document of the kind within our knowledge, or whether 
it was the gracious welcome given to the Herr and Cap- 
tain blanked in such unmistakable Carlylese, that drew 
forth this improper expression, does not appear. One 
concludes that it was as well that "the pair," as the 
Carlyles, man and wife, are usually designated in these 
pages, did not make their wished-for journey to Weimar. 
It was much better to exchange books and trinkets, and 
live at the ends of the earth. 

Yet what has been said above is only a part of the 
story, and the least agreeable part. From another point 
of view, this memorial of the acquaintance of these two 
illustrious men is more attractive. It is without intel- 
lectual value, not unnaturally; these two men have ex- 
pressed themselves so fully in their books that nothing 
fresh or striking in the way of thought could be antic- 
ipated; but as an exhibition of kindness and good-will 
on Goethe's part, and of reverence and disciple-ship on 
Carlyle's, the Correspondence has a human interest, and 
it serves also as a landmark in English literary history. 
To Goethe, Carlyle was only a translator and student of 
German literature, engaged in the active propagandism 
of the fame and name of himself and his compatriots. 
He praised him, indeed, in general terms, and predicted 
a future for him; but there is no intimation that he saw 
any original genius in him except what could be usefully 
employed in continuing the business of translating his 
own works and writing manuals of German literature; 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 163 

and the tone and matter of Eckermann's letters indicate 
that this was in fact all that the name of Carlyle meant 
at Weimar. 

At that time Carlyle had given no sign of being capable 
of work other than critical review, of a longer or shorter 
kind. He was then the principal channel by which Ger- 
man literature was being communicated to the English 
people, and it was this circumstance, practically, that 
made Goethe his correspondent. The latter's heart was 
in the work of extending German ideas into other lan- 
guages, and promoting a general intellectual commerce 
among civilized nations, and he found in Carlyle a ready 
and able assistant; and inasmuch as all that was being 
done in England then in disseminating German thought 
was a matter of interest to Goethe, it happens that 
this Correspondence represents fairly well the historic 
moment when the later literary influence of Germany 
began to be effective on English soil. This interest of 
the letters is merely incidental and for scholars; but it 
helps us to understand the facts of Carlyle's relation 
to Goethe, which really sprang out of his usefulness as a 
hack-writer on the magazines and as a translator. We 
do not have here the communion of two equal friends, 
as in the letters between Carlyle and Emerson, or of two 
original minds actively giving or receiving influence; 
there is nothing of this, but only compliments, attentions, 
and talk incidental to the German propaganda. 

This being understood, it is altogether delightful to 
observe in what kindly and intimate ways Goethe 
varied and enriched the slight connection between him- 
self and his practically unknown admirer, how thought- 
ful he was, what true and natural good-feeling he showed, 
until the acquaintance did really ripen into a warm 



1 64 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

mutual friendliness. This is the charming thing in view 
of which one forgets that Goethe was anything more 
than a pleasant and polite old gentleman, much engaged 
in the little affairs of age, and sorry that his head could 
no longer furnish a lock of hair for that one of "the 
worthy wedded pair" who had sent him a lock from her 
own; and forgets, too, that Carlyle, although still un- 
distinguished, was by no means a youth when he was 
writing the most decorous compositions he ever penned. 
One enters into the spirit of it, and enjoys the self- 
complacent, kind-mannered old poet and the meek and 
not altogether unsuspecting Scotchman; for in no other 
place does Carlyle appear so unmitigably Scotch as 
in this book. 



IV 

Of the good and evil of modern biography the memorials 
of Carlyle will be a severe test. Slowly he won his way 
merely by literature to a place where he had the respect 
of the world, the veneration of the most earnest of the 
younger generation, and power over all the best. He 
died; and the interest of his work, which had been as 
real as Alexander's, as laborious as Frederick's, as believ- 
ing as Cromwell's, has been superseded by the interest 
of his life. This is temporary, of course, but the inti- 
mate knowledge that men possess in regard to his own 
human nature will profoundly modify the meaning of 
his books to them and in the long run this change for 
better or worse will prove the significant thing. He him- 
self taught that character is the best light by which to 
get an understanding of a man's work, and his biographer 
has proved faithful to that theory. He himself author- 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 165 

ized the violation of his own thoughts, affections, and 
wrongdoing, in their secretest privacy. It, is true that 
he did it in that mood of sorrow and repentance which 
is peculiarly liable to error of judgment, when a wise 
friend is a friend indeed; but he did it. The seal that 
protected his married life being once broken, other seals 
easily gave way. There can be no question that Car- 
lyle's literary influence has seriously suffered in conse- 
quence; and, though our annals have been enriched by 
the story of a life of the highest moral interest, it is 
quite possible that the sacrifice has been too great. 
There have been men whose nature so outvalued their 
work that biography, while revealing their feeblenesses, 
has honored them; there has been character so fine that 
its illustration in the acts of daily life is a possession 
much more precious than any other record of it orig- 
inally meant for the public: but Carlyle's nature and 
character, taken in the whole, were not such. His vir- 
tues were completely expressed in his works, and for 
the most part his biography has been a lengthening his- 
tory of the miserable effects of his faults upon his own 
and others' lives. Could he have characterized himself 
with the same narrowness of heart and intellectual con- 
tempt that he exhibited toward some men whom he knew, 
these memorials would have furnished him matter for a 
more biting and a more unjust description than any he 
has been guilty of. What the features of it would be there 
is no need to outline. That he was genuine, sincere, 
truthful, no one will doubt; but all will remember that the 
same qualities in that "poor fool" of a Gladstone, in whom 
Carlyle thought all the cants of the age had become 
convictions, are as worthy respect. He was strenuously 
righteous; but so was Mill, in whom that virtue did not 



1 66 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

count for salvation in his eyes. So one might con- 
tinue, were it useful to argue to the point that Carlyle 
did not monopolize the manliness of England. It is not 
strange that Froude lays stress unduly on his friend's 
good traits, but it cannot be disguised that there is 
much need for the exercise of charity by the reader; and 
the proof of this is that the story touches the heart far 
more than it illumines, or exalts, or strengthens the spirit. 
In this narrative of the years of Carlyle's mature life in 
London, one point is touched on that has never been com- 
prehensively treated, and that is his relation to the public 
questions of his own time. Froude tries to make much 
of it, but he succeeds only in keeping up an obscure feeling 
that the subject is there. Every one knows what Carlyle 
thought, and there is a taking plausibility in the analogy 
Froude finds between him and the Hebrew prophets who 
rebuked, denounced, and exhorted the tribes that forgot 
God ; but the likeness would hold as well in the case of any 
vehement reformer who had not the power of the sword. 
He prophesied destruction; and as the history of civilized 
man has been a series of catastrophes it is quite possible 
that his prophecy is true. At each new break in the old 
order men hope that the kingdom of God is near at hand, 
and we who are building on liberty, the diffusion of intelli- 
gence among all the people, and philanthropy, indulge the 
old belief, perhaps to no better purpose than did the men 
who converted the nations, who brought back antiquity, 
and who freed the conscience of Europe. We are engaged 
in a great effort of equal dignity, and Carlyle declared 
against us, set himself in opposition to the irresistible 
movement of civilization, and denounced upon us "God's 
Revenge." So once had Savonarola done with equal sin- 
cerity, and perhaps the issue will in the end be the same 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 167 

to the moderns as it was to the Florentines. But in this 
matter Carlyle exceeded the role of the prophet; he not 
only preached that no moral regeneration could come 
from the new expedients of politics, in a large sense, for 
the administration of society, but he added that such 
measures were foolish in their own worldly sphere. In 
the first part of his message he was right — he said 
what every prophet declares is God's word; but in the 
second it ought now to be the devout hope of all men 
that he may prove a babbler. Certainly, in this province 
of his thought — in his sneers at the humane efforts of 
his contemporaries to give manhood to all who wear the 
form of man, to show even in prisons some kindliness on 
the part of organized society toward the criminal and 
vicious, to insist in practical affairs that no man can be 
saved except by the exercise of powers that involve such 
freedom of thought, motive, and action as may also pos- 
sibly result in his own damnation — in all this he ran 
counter to the spirit of Christianity. His temper did 
belong in many respects to the Old Dispensation, to the 
rigor and bigotry of Scotch Presbyterianism, to the 
countryman of Knox. He was so careful that things 
should be done decently, that acts should be right, as to 
make it seem that his corner-stone was a belief in govern- 
ment. He had a higher regard for authority than liberty, 
for compulsion than persuasion, for the law than the 
victim; but of the aims and methods, the aspirations and 
energies, of the Christ's kingdom that cometh not by 
force he seems to have known little. He never was so 
profound a spiritualist as to make statecraft, as Plato 
did, a department of man's education: to him all that 
was "niggerism." Carlyle's convictions regarding suf- 
frage, emancipation, prison-reform, parliamentary gov- 



1 68 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

ernment, and the like topics on which he was accustomed 
to emit "geyser-spouts," as they are termed, were closely 
connected with his more general views of the moral 
order of the universe, the sources of greatness in men and 
nations, and the lessons of history as he read them; 
and to follow out these threads of union would be very 
helpful toward an explanation of his reactionary thought. 
Froude has not done this; he plainly respects Carlyle as 
a political seer as well as in his capacity of "Hebrew 
prophet," but he brings nothing to support his master 
except a Toryish sentiment. We may fail in our effort 
for the self-education of the race by devolving upon 
men opportunities they may abuse and responsibilities 
they may violate, and there are elements enough of 
danger in our legacy from old times as well as of our own 
making; but had Carlyle been our leader in the "Ex- 
odus from Houndsditch," he would have taken us back, 
very surely, to the bondage of an Israelitish code, if not 
to the shadow of Egypt itself. 

In the last forty years of Carlyle's London career there 
is fresh illustration of his character, but no new traits 
appear. The impression which is most strengthened is 
that of the strange mingling of the rudeness of his orig- 
inal nature with the fineness of the high-bred civilization 
into which he grew. The strength of his peasant an- 
cestry was at the core of his virtue; but as he developed, 
and appropriated from others, many modifications are 
noticeable: for one thing, he became tender. One be- 
lieves he was always essentially kind; but, as in unculti- 
vated men, his kindness had to be appealed to in order 
to become active; it was not the habit of his daily life. 
It is as if the softening and enriching processes, that 
usually require the period of two or three generations 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 169 

to import into character the fine results of civilization, 
had been crowded into a single existence. This is one 
reason, perhaps, why the last years of his life seem 
morally more beautiful, as if time had done its perfect 
work for him. The trait which shows most plainly his 
peasant extraction and which clung longest to him was 
his peculiar appreciation of the charm of civility as he 
saw it in great houses. It is the more significant be- 
cause he seldom gives it verbal form; he may not have 
known quite clearly his own feeling. It may seem a 
strange, an inconsistent matter; but there can be no 
rational doubt that Carlyle liked to be lionized, and was 
willing to pay the price of physical misery for a dinner 
with great people. It was not the worst of faults. He 
would, nevertheless, probably have resented Froude's 
description of him as one of Lord Ashburton's train; 
and so far as his consciousness went the remark must be 
regarded as unjust, though the fact may have been as 
stated. However that was, he paid dearly for the epi- 
sode of his friendship with that excellent nobleman. In 
other matters, too, especially in the ferocity of his 
judgments, one hears the North Briton accent. But 
after all, the story of this life now finished is a very 
noble one; it attaches men's hearts to a degree that is 
marvelous when one remembers how much there is in 
it which repels. Carlyle's life, for better or worse, is 
now a part of his works. 



Unconscious autobiography is interesting, but it is 
seldom fair and adequate. In "The Letters and Mem- 
orials of Jane Welsh Carlyle," one reads plainly the petty 



1 7 o LITERARY MEMOIRS 

and mean details of a thirty years' housekeeping; but 
it is only inferentially that one gains an impression of 
the charm that, before Mrs. Carlyle's marriage, sur- 
rounded her with lovers, and, after it, made her the 
prized friend of men of intellect, and the refuge of all 
mad and miserable people, and won for her, when she 
grew old, the enthusiastic affection of her associates of 
all ages and all degrees of talent or stupidity. She has 
fared ill in having her familiar letters given to the world 
just as they were written, in the raw, with all their 
feminine confidences, which an editor with a touch of 
the old-fashioned chivalrous feeling for women would 
have suppressed, with their hasty account of her domes- 
tic vexations of body and mind, their revelation of her 
little necessary social hypocrisies, and even the heart- 
burnings that she intrusted only to her diary. Her 
husband, it is true, prepared the letters for publication; 
he was led to do so by a wish to honor her, and also by 
a feeling of remorse and a desire to do penance for his 
ill-treatment; but he left the decision in the matter to 
Froude, on whom the responsibility lies. It is useless 
to lament the indiscretion and obtuseness of this editor; 
the hero has found his valet, and the preacher of silence 
is to have as many words made about him and his as 
possible; it is only left to the public to be thankful 
that the house, which is now lighted up and thrown 
open from kitchen to bedroom, had no worse secrets for 
disclosure. 

The letters, being written by an unsuspecting woman 
who was unusually genuine, frank, original, audacious in 
word and act, and unconventional to a fault, and being, 
moreover, seasoned with entertaining literary and social 
gossip, are, of course, full of interest. Vivacity is the 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 171 

marked trait of the writer; but the continual reference 
to her happy girlhood and its scenes, growing more 
pathetic year after year, and the continual lament of 
Carlyle in his notes — like a Greek chorus, giving a 
kind of artistic unity to the series — lend an effect of sad- 
ness to the whole. The life of the heroine — she de- 
serves the name — was impressive; amid the ignoble 
trivialities that fell to her daily lot, she kept to the high 
purposes involved in them with great courage and self- 
control, and with unremitting devotion. An only child, 
reared in a wealthy and refined home, the favorite of 
all who knew her, with many rich and intelligent suitors 
about her, she had chosen to wed the poor and obscure 
man in whose genius she alone believed, and, against 
the advice of her friends, had married him, and gone to 
the lonely Scotch farm to be practically his household 
servant; there she had spent six toilsome years, and now 
they had come to London, to the house that was to be 
her home until death. These letters cover this latter 
period, of the household affairs of which they contain 
a complete account. Her work was less menial, since 
they kept a servant, so that she no longer had to mop up 
her own floors; but the tasks set her were difficult and 
exhausting. To provide meals that Carlyle could eat 
without too violent storming — for, as she said in Maz- 
zini's phrase, Carlyle "loved silence somewhat platon- 
ically"; to shield him from the annoyances of visitors 
and bad servants; to rid the neighborhood, by ingenious 
diplomacy, of the nuisances of ever-reappearing parrots, 
dogs, cocks, and the like enemies of sleep and medita- 
tion, her own as well as his; to buy his clothes, see law- 
yers and agents, even to protest against his high taxes 
before the commissioners, and, in all possible ways, to 



172 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

save his money at the expense of her own tastes and 
even of her health ; to attend to refittings of the house by 
carpenters, painters, and masons, while he was away 
on his summer vacations; in brief, to spare him all the 
ills of the outer world, to make the conditions of his 
work favorable, and himself as comfortable as it was 
possible for a morose dyspeptic to be, and at the same 
time to prevent his seeing how much trouble and anx- 
iety it cost her — such was the duty prescribed to 
herself and done faithfully for years without complaint, 
amid illnesses not light nor few, which were "not with- 
out their good uses," she wrote, because she arose from 
them "with new heart for the battle of existence — what 
a woman means by new heart, not new brute force, as 
you men understand it, but new power of loving and 
enduring." In this effective practical life she tried to 
repress some portion of her womanly nature, for she 
agreed, verbally at least, with Carlyle's disapproval of 
"moods," "feelings," "sentiments," and similar phases 
of emotion not resulting in work done; but her nature, 
being pathetically susceptible to these forbidden experi- 
ences, often overruled her philosophy, and brought the 
knowledge of her solitude home to her; for she had no 
direct share in her husband's work, no marks of tender- 
ness from him, and few words or deeds in recognition of 
her sacrifices for him. She succeeded only too well in 
blinding him to her own pain, which was, indeed, the 
easiest of her tasks. Her words on Carlyle's sending her 
a birthday present just after her mother's death are sig- 
nificant of much that is unsaid, and contain the explana- 
tion she gave to herself of his earlier neglect. "I cannot 
tell you," she writes, "how wae his little gift made me, 
as well as glad; it was the first thing of the kind he ever 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 173 

gave to me in his life. In great matters he is always 
kind and considerate; but these little attentions, which 
we women attach so much importance to, he was never 
in the habit of rendering to any one; his up-bringing and 
the severe turn of mind he has from nature had alike 
indisposed him toward them. And now the desire to 
replace to me the irreplaceable makes him as good in 
little things as he used to be in great." This was in the 
sixteenth year after marriage. 

There was a limit, however, to Mrs. Carlyle's power 
of self-sacrifice. Her proud, spirited, sensitive nature 
was ever reasserting itself, persistently refusing to be lost 
in her husband's individuality. She thirsted both for 
expressed recognition and for expressed affection. In 
an early letter to Sterling she writes thus: "In spite of 
the honestest efforts to annihilate my I-ety or merge it 
in what the world doubtless considers my better half, I 
still find myself a self-subsisting and, alas! self-seeking 
me. Little Felix in the 'Wanderjahre,' when, in the midst 
of an animated scene between Wilhelm and Theresa, 
he pulls Theresa's gown and calls out, 'Mama Theresa, 
I, too, am here!' only speaks out with the charming 
trustfulness of a little child what I am perpetually feel- 
ing, though too sophisticated to pull people's skirts, or 
exclaim, in so many words, 'Mr. Sterling, I, too, am 
here ! ' " The recognition which she desired was abun- 
dantly given by the men who gathered about Carlyle, 
many of whom were more attached to her than to him; 
and the despised "feelings" found an outlet in brighten- 
ing various miserable lives, poor exiles of all nations, 
unfortunate maidens, lost children, and, in general, all 
people in affliction, who were attracted to her, she said, 
as straw to amber. Notwithstanding the affection and de- 



174 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

votion of her many friends, she seems to have remained 
lonely at heart; but she kept on with the old routine, 
while the "French Revolution" and "Cromwell" were 
being written, and she found comfort, if not content- 
ment, in the sense of fulfilled duty and the knowledge 
that she had materially helped her husband in her silent 
way. The whisper of fame grew loud, the doors of the 
great flew open; but when her faith in Carlyle's genius 
was at last justified and her hopes for him realized, some- 
thing happened that had not entered into her calcula- 
tions. Carlyle was finding the sweetest reward in the 
society of another woman. This was the first Lady 
Ashburton, who was "the cleverest woman out of sight" 
that Mrs. Carlyle ever saw, and at whose home, a center 
of intellectual society, both she and her husband often 
visited; but it seems that in London the wives of men 
of genius, like the wives of bishops, do not take the 
social rank of their husbands; so Froude assures us, 
and Lady Ashburton made the fact plain to Mrs. Carlyle. 
The result was, that, toward the close of a ten years' 
acquaintance, the latter grew so jealous of the former's 
fascination as to make herself very wretched. Miss 
Geraldine Jewsbury, her most intimate friend, explains 
the affair in a very sensible note. She says that any 
other wife would have laughed at Carlyle's bewitchment, 
but this one, seeing Lady Ashburton admired for sayings 
and doings for which she was snubbed, and contrasting 
the former's grande-dame manners with her own lonely 
endeavors to help her husband and serve him through 
years of hardship, became more abidingly and intensely 
miserable than words can utter; her inmost life was soli- 
tary, without tenderness, caresses, or loving words from 
him, and she felt that her love and life were laid waste. 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 175 

All this she willingly endured while he neglected her for 
his work; but when this excuse could no longer be made 
for him, the strain told on her, and, without faltering from 
her purpose of helping and shielding him, she became 
warped. Such is Miss Jewsbury's account, nearly in 
her own words. There is no need to apportion the 
blame between the pair. The fact is that Mrs. Carlyle 
suffered, and that, for some time after she became aware 
of her own real feeling, her letters are less confidingly 
affectionate in regard to her husband, and contain more 
or less open discontent of a very justifiable kind. After 
Lady Ashburton's death, she writes to him as follows: 
"I have neither the strength and spirits to bear up against 
your discontent, nor the obtuseness to be indifferent to it. 
You have not the least notion what a killing thought it 
is to have put into one's heart, gnawing there day and 
night, that one ought to be dead, since one can no longer 
make the same exertions as formerly"; and there is 
more to the same effect, to which Carlyle affixes his note, 
"Alas! alas! sinner that I am!" Notwithstanding such 
plain words, which are indeed infrequent, Mrs. Carlyle 
still guarded her husband, standing between him and the 
objects of his wrath, "imitating, in a small, humble way, 
the Roman soldier who gathered his arms full of the 
enemy's spears, and received them all into his own 
breast," on which sentence Carlyle again comments, "Oh 
heavens, the comparison! it was too true." As time 
went on they drew together more closely. The second 
Lady Ashburton appeared, who became very dear to Mrs. 
Carlyle, and was even advised by her to "send a kiss" to 
the now aging philosopher. Carlyle himself understood 
better his wife's moods and needs, though still imper- 
fectly, and he was more kind in word and more thought- 



176 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

ful in act than of old. Thus, at last, the letters conclude 
as pleasantly as they began, with Mrs. Carlyle's elation 
over the Edinburgh triumph, from which her husband 
returned to find her dead. 

On the whole, in spite of appearances, the married 
life here laid bare was not an exceptionally unhappy 
one; nor does it seem that Carlyle's neglect of his wife 
sprang from any moral fault, but merely from his native 
insensibility, his absorption in his work, and that un- 
conscious selfishness which is ordinarily induced in even 
the best men by persistent silent sacrifice on their behalf. 
He simply did not see, did not know, did not under- 
stand his wife's trials and nature; but that he had deep 
tenderness in his heart is plain, both from his works, 
where it is shown imaginatively, and from things recorded 
of his own acts in these volumes and elsewhere. That 
his love was single and his loyalty entire these pitiful 
notes amply and painfully prove. But independently of 
him altogether, Mrs. Carlyle deserves remembrance for 
her own sake, not merely for the work done by her as 
a true wife, nor for the heroic spirit shown in the doing 
it, but for an intrinsically refined and gentle nature, the 
history of which leaves the impression that, although it 
always remained noble and attractive, it was injured by 
the circumstances amid which she was placed. The total 
effect of her letters, so far as they relate to herself, goes 
to confirm Miss Jewsbury's summary, that "the lines in 
which her character was laid down were very grand, but 
the result was blurred and distorted and confused." 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 177 



VI 

The literary handling of the mortal career of Thomas 
Carlyle has exhibited all the faults of which biography is 
capable. It has long been understood that very few 
men can write their own lives with veracity. Autobiog- 
raphies are often useful because they exhibit something 
of personal charm or make tacit confession of weak- 
nesses and singularities, as a genuine, sincere, vigorous 
character does in his real human intercourse; but they 
do not serve in the place of formal and impartial narrative 
of events and the view of personality from the outside. 
A man in the course of his life suffers many changes; his 
intellectual and frequently his moral point of view varies, 
and with each decade his past takes on a new perspective; 
he can never reproduce in imagination, still less in mem- 
ory, what he was as he was; his identity, to risk a 
paradox, is self-effacing. Carlyle, in writing his "Remi- 
niscences," was peculiarly at a disadvantage; he was in a 
mood of suffering, and he saw his past through the cloud 
of recent bereavement, which distorted its elements. His 
genius itself, so powerfully imaginative, and his emotion, 
which seems to have deprived him of the saving faculty 
of humor in some portions of his subject, were both 
against him; and, besides, he was an old man. Of 
the utmost value in the impersonal parts and of great 
moral interest in all that concerns himself (so far as his 
words are the judgment passed by a man upon his deeds 
at the close of his career), his "Autobiography" is but a 
small part of the material for his "Life," and is directly of 
worth for that purpose only as it is supported by the 
day-to-day record of documents, by the observation of 






178 LITERARY MEMOIRS 



others, and by his own books. It was necessary that 
some one else should undertake the task of examining 
and reducing the copious materials which were in exist- 
ence for a full biography. 

Carlyle was scarcely more fortunate in his choice of 
one to intrust this labor to than he was in his selection 
of himself as the scribe of his works and days. Froude, 
if one considers only the judgment of the man, showed 
himself lacking not only in reticence and tact, but in 
any proper understanding of the nature of the Carlyles. 
This was a "grievous fault," and fatal to his success in 
the mere capacity of biographer. The trouble is not so 
much that he was indiscreet, and told more of the truth 
than good taste and friendly devotion to a friend's better 
self would warrant; but he made his blabbing disclosures 
without right discrimination, and so presented and ar- 
ranged the facts, so molded them with his own mistaken 
conceptions, and colored them with what is essentially 
prejudice, that they served, no otherwise than as did 
Carlyle's own autobiographical writings, to give wrong 
impressions. The facts are thrown into confusion by 
the brooding of Carlyle in the one case and the per- 
version of Froude in the other. 

So much has been clear this long time, but it now 
appears that Froude was guilty of gross negligence in 
his editorial work, as has been brought out by the com- 
parison of the original materials with his printed tran- 
scripts; and he is further charged with warping the 
narrative by giving to certain parts of it a bias unfavor- 
able to the Carlyles, in the face of the evidence before 
him. The only inference to be drawn is, that he was 
equally as careless in reading and sifting the original 
manuscripts as he was in attending to their correct 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 179 

publication. The case against him is strong enough to 
convict. It is Carlyle, however, and not Froude for 
whom the world feels concern. Both the "Autobiography" 
and the authorized "Life" have elements of untrust- 
worthiness in them as records of the exact truth of 
events and as portrayals of characters. Under the cir- 
cumstances, what is there left for a friend of Carlyle who 
feels the injustice of this state of the case to the prin- 
cipals involved, except to publish faithfully such of the 
originals as may give to the public opportunity to correct, 
at first hand, the opinions formed on the grounds of 
Carlyle's confession and Froude's narrative? 

This is the task which Professor Norton charged him- 
self with. He attempts no narrative; he merely prints 
seriatim letters of Carlyle. At first these are the letters 
of a youth to two or three college mates, to his parents 
and brothers, and to the young lady whom he was des- 
tined to marry. They are the expression of a dutiful 
son and brother and of an interested friend, in regard to 
matters of family concern, his own health, his studies, 
pursuits, prospects; they are no more than this, for even 
in those letters to Jane Welsh which Professor Norton 
has thought it not unbecoming to publish, with one ex- 
ception, Carlyle is the student and not distinctly the 
lover. He was engaged during these years either in 
teaching school or in private tutoring, with literature in 
the shape of hackwork slowly taking more and more of 
his time to its special service, until in the last year he 
was fully in the harness as a professional translator. It 
is not to be expected that he would have much of conse- 
quence to communicate, and, so far as intrinsic worth 
goes, we must frankly say there is little in these epistles 
that need detain the attention of men. It is singular 



180 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

that there should be so slight intimation of any formed 
opinions; the young Edinburgher, periodically returning 
to the folks at home, read a great deal and thought 
about it, estimated it, wrote it out in the way of biography 
and translation, but had practically nothing of his own 
to say; or at any rate he did not intrust his meditations 
to letters. His mind was not developed. Carlyle, in 
the thoughts by which the world knows him, was not 
there. 

What was there, however, was Carlyle's temperament. 
The native endowment of the youth stands out all the 
clearer because unconfused with any opinions. What 
this was is well enough understood: a quick eye for the 
oddities of human nature; a sound judgment of men, 
seemingly intuitive in its operation, but owing much to 
his inherited moral perceptiveness ; ready intelligence, 
and a susceptibility to the poetic and the grotesque in 
man's life, so fruitful in later years; and, above all, the 
moral sense which was the main feeder of his genius. 
These things are to be felt continuously in his letters. 
Something of his style is also observable — lacking in 
brilliancy and power, but essentially there. For the rest, 
the only other thing which belongs to the indubitable 
Carlyle of fame is his dyspepsia. He writes of it from 
the first with an objurgatory vigor which has more of the 
distinct prophecy of his future in it than anything else 
to be found in the volumes and it is abundantly manifest, 
whether altogether because of this early and painful in- 
fliction or not, that he was an irritable person to live 
with, sharp-spoken, querulous, and hard-grained. He 
was proud toward the world, discontented, and ambi- 
tious; his own opinion of himself, happily justified by 
the event, was fully sufficient to sustain him in times of 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 



i«i 



difficulty and struggle of heart and hope, and he was 
fully conscious of his superiority at all points. 

His letters to his parents, and their replies, are by 
far the most interesting; but less on Carlyle's account 
than as a picture of Scotch life. This special value was 
one reason why Professor Norton included so large a 
number of the family letters. The letters to Miss Welsh 
are mostly letters of advice respecting composition, with- 
out any marked character, and those of them which are 
not in the vein of "the guide, philosopher, and friend" 
are not very significant. The total value of the collec- 
tion, consequently, is, as has been said, not great 
in itself. A hard-headed young Scotchman, well-met 
among his few friends, attached to his kin, and bound to 
get on by literature in which he had the wit to find the 
best — such was Carlyle from the close of his boyhood 
to his marriage in full manhood. His character, had he 
ended then, would have been nothing to the world. 

The points in which the story, here spread before the 
reader in the original documents, differs from the account 
rendered by Froude in his own words, relate to the nature 
and relations of a few persons. They have no imme- 
diate intellectual interest; in fact, the whole subject be- 
longs in the region of world gossip, which differs from 
village gossip only in the eminence of the persons involved. 
It was inevitable, after Froude's publication, but it was 
no less unfortunate, that public attention should be di- 
verted from the intellectual history of Carlyle to the 
special point whether he treated his wife well. The 
moral ideals of Carlyle were neglected, the history of their 
genesis and development fell far into the background, and 
the question now asked was, What was his own moral 
practice in daily life? It is a pertinent inquiry in the 



1 82 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

cases of all men who assume to be public teachers; it is 
often a useful one. But in Carlyle's case it is complicated 
by the fact that, in the particulars in which it is commonly 
held that he failed of manliness, he seems to have been 
unconscious of his errors at the time of committing them. 
Defects of nature, rather than dereliction of duty, are 
brought out in his family history; he was hard, selfish, 
and dull in some matters, but he was too much absorbed 
in his own life to be habitually conscious of these faults, 
though he was aware of them momentarily from time to 
time. His wrong-doing in these respects began early. 
He indulged his weaknesses of temper amid his own 
people, and often expressed contrition in words which 
plainly apply, not to single acts, but to a general course of 
conduct. 

The main question, however, in these early years of 
his life concerns the position of Edward Irving in the 
group, and the circumstances which led to Carlyle's en- 
gagement with Miss Welsh and the feelings which the 
lovers entertained towards each other. Froude inspires 
the belief that Miss Welsh's attachment to Irving was of 
a deep and lasting kind, and that it remained in her heart 
in the state of a blighted affection. This circumstance, 
he says, Carlyle did not realize. Secondly, he intimates 
that the marriage was brought to pass by the interference 
of others, whose action at least hastened it; that Carlyle 
exhibited a selfish temper in the preliminary arrange- 
ments for a home, and showed himself in other ways some- 
thing less than a man of sense and breeding. Professor 
Norton controverts Froude on all these points, which he 
treats of in his appendix. The evidence, so far as it is 
contained in the Carlyle love-letters, is not before the 
public; but Professor Norton, while withholding it, 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 183 

clearly states that in his opinion this correspondence 
affords a view of Carlyle's and Jane Welsh's characters 
and mutual relations "different both in particulars and 
general effect from that given by Mr. Froude." So far 
as Irving is involved, Carlyle, while mentioning him with 
friendliness, has a clear eye for his foolishness, as he 
thinks it; and Miss Welsh, Professor Norton says, came 
to see "his essential weakness — his vanity, his mawkish 
sentimentality, his self-deception, his extravagance verg- 
ing to cant in matters of religion." This seems to put 
an end to any notion that in her wedded life she compared 
her lot with Carlyle to "what might have been." 

The letters in the second portion of Professor Norton's 
collection are in nearly all cases written to members of his 
family, and portions of a few of them were included, with 
many errors, in Froude's "Life." They afford a complete 
view of Carlyle's interests, labors, and temperament at an 
important and trying period of his life, and amply justify 
the hopes that such an epistolary autobiography would 
give not only a much needed correction of the false im- 
pressions made by Froude's method of dealing with his 
materials, but an entertaining and useful story of Carlyle's 
growth and nature. The most striking general feature of 
the letters is their simple and almost humble tone. 
Froude, by selecting for publication the most highly 
colored passages, and especially those most affected by 
emotion, melancholy, or picturesqueness of style, made 
his narrative altogether too high-strung. The larger mass 
of ordinary letters is needed to give proper relief to such 
moments of feeling. Carlyle's relations with his family 
— and these were the most vital and intimate of his life- 
relations — were natural and healthy; and they were in 
the highest degree honorable to him. One would look in 



X 8 4 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

vain for a better example of filial or brotherly affection 
constantly alive, conscientious, and helpful. He was 
interested in the doings and fortunes of all, not in a gen- 
erally sympathetic, but a specific and practical way, and 
he knew no difference between the "Doctor" at Rome and 
Naples and poor "Alick" struggling on his farm, under the 
hopeless conditions and hard surroundings of Scottish 
agriculture. He was always anxious to give and receive 
merely personal news, shared in their ventures and trials, 
and was ready with advice and encouragement. 

The more interesting part is naturally the expression 
of the attachment between himself and his aged and 
pious mother, as it also exhibits character in a very 
pure form. Carlyle's mother, indeed, with her worry- 
ings over the children and her trust in God, her learning 
to write from him and her painful exercise of the pen, 
her reading of his books and articles, her limited ex- 
perience beyond the Ecclefechan horizon, and her look- 
ing forward to the annual meeting with her son, is the 
most prominent character in the correspondence; and 
whenever he writes to her, the page is brighter for the 
beauty and tenderness of the relationship. To have 
brought out fully the fact of this tie, which was so large 
an element in Carlyle's human life, is sufficient reward; 
but when to this is added the spirit of the whole united 
family, struggling to live independently and worthily, and 
to better themselves and each other according to their 
opportunities, a great deal has been added to our knowl- 
edge of the good in Carlyle's days. 

Next to this undiminished and simple family affection 
and helpfulness in Carlyle, one notes particularly his 
kindness to those whom he could in any useful way 
assist. He was hospitable really to any sincere and 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 185 

honest young man, and did not limit his interest to liter- 
ary youths. He was willing to do a good turn by the 
way to very humble and ordinary folk. The capital 
instance of his kindness, however, in these letters, is his 
attention to poor Glen, a disciple of his whose mind 
failed. He read Homer with him — much to his own 
pleasure, it is true, but that does not lessen the virtue 
of the act, and he was attentive, so far as was in his 
power, to his comfort and bettering. To Irving, too, 
his spirit is admirable in patience and love. The victim 
of what Carlyle most abhorred, he nevertheless was not 
suffered to become alienated from his heart, and Carlyle's 
pictures of the wretched condition of his friend are 
more full of sorrow than of the contempt he must have 
felt for the results of such a life as Irving came to lead. 
Towards Jeffrey, also, though one perceives the gradually 
widening rift between the two, Carlyle maintained as 
appreciative and grateful an attitude as was to be ex- 
pected. Jeffrey himself nowhere in our accounts of him 
stands forth so amiably and acceptably as here. He 
was kind and helpful, according to his lights, when 
Carlyle needed friends, and will be so most pleasantly 
remembered. Mill's friendship and considerate services 
also are truly rendered, and, on the whole, one gets the 
impression that he was a truer and more interested 
friend than the correspondence properly shows. These 
are the principal human elements in the letters, outside 
of the family concerns, and they give an impression of 
general kindliness and good-will in the air — the very 
thing which Froude most left out. 

Carlyle himself is egoistical as always; absorbed in 
himself, in his genius and its expression so much as 
to lend disproportion to the world of men outside him, 



186 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

which he always beheld with a queer distortion. The 
keenness of his physical eye seems to have partly blinded 
him to moral and intellectual character less immediately 
and continually shown, and his proneness to a deprecia- 
tory judgment disturbed his little faculty of toleration. 
His mood was that of the prophet, and he carried it 
to the dinner-table, where it does not belong. The diffi- 
culty he found in obtaining expression for his genius 
doubtless contributed to this oblique view of ordinary 
human life. The necessity he seems under of talking to 
himself, as a driver does to his horse, to keep his courage 
up, is as obvious in all these letters as in any others. 
He preached to his own soul as pertinaciously as to the 
world, and in the same words. This strain, this un- 
ceasing reminder to himself to fear God and respect not 
men's judgments or ways, keeps on independent of his 
progress. He gradually left behind the schemes of tak- 
ing professorships and lecturing, he burned his failures 
in literature, and came to a sure conviction as to his place 
and work, and the fate he was subject to of staying put 
but without finding it easier to do so without self- 
declamation. 

It is hardly fanciful to say that these apostrophes to 
himself and "lashings" of moral feeling were to him 
what, in another age and with other modes of the same 
faith, prayer and "wrestlings" would have been. They 
were his spiritual resource and the language of them. 
But in a certain way the constant repetition of these 
phrases and the fluency of these "communings" serve 
an end. It was one result of the publication of his 
opinions upon men and of his family history to turn 
attention from his works to his life; and it is well to 
find that the principles he preached were those he lived 



: 



CARLYLE AND HIS FRIENDS 187 

by, that they were self-derived, genuine and native to 
his own struggles, and to observe in what way they oper- 
ated in himself from day to day and year to year. The 
sight of struggle in its real forms, of tragedy unsoftened 
and unilluminated by the poetic spirit, is never pleasant; 
hard features are as disagreeable in a life as in a face, 
and in Carlyle's biography this element is trying always. 
But, although in these letters all this must enter, being 
a part of the truth, yet the value of Professor Norton's 
work, which is that of a just friend as well as of a 
laborious editor, is that it lowers the relief of these hard 
lines, and shows more fully the kindliness, the fidelity, 
and the true-heartedness of Carlyle, in which his man- 
hood lay quite as much as in his self-rallying courage, 
his indignation at feebleness and folly, and his unchar- 
itableness when his affections were not concerned. These 
volumes show his private life with those nearest and 
dearest to him, apart from his genius, and in this way 
■ — which is the way of truth — serve his memory as 
his friends would wish. 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 

Edward Fitzgerald, without being essential to the 
literary history of his time, has made to it the very real 
contribution of a pleasant memory. If these letters had 
unfortunately perished, his name would have allured the 
imagination of lovers of literature eager to know more 
of this shy, eccentric, modest man, the writer in his youth 
of a poem that Lamb envied him, and in age of a trans- 
lation that added almost an original classic to English, 
the life-long friend of Tennyson, Thackeray, and Sped- 
ding. The publication of his correspondence, however, 
has dispelled the mystery and disclosed the man in his 
tastes, friendships, peculiarities — the whole range of his 
"innocent jar-niente life" as it seemed to Carlyle. One 
recurs after reading these pages to Tennyson's dedica- 
tory poem addressed to Fitzgerald — perhaps the poet's 
most masterly piece of light verse — only to be surprised 
at the truth of the characterization there given. There 
is nothing in these letters so fine as the picture in those 
opening stanzas of "Old Fitz" in his "suburb-grange," 
with the rosy-footed doves flying about and perching 
upon him; but there are many touches that bring his 
temperament and life before us with a similar vividness 
and felicity. And the rest of Tennyson's poem — the 
vegetarianism of his friend, "that large infidel, your 
Omar," and even the discontent of Fitzgerald with the 
work of the Laureate, after 1842, so deftly glanced at 
in the last lines: 

189, 



190 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

"When, in our younger London days, 
You found some merit in my rhymes, 
And I more pleasure in your praise" — 

all this is amplified and illustrated, with much besides, 
just as the leisurely reader of Tennyson might wish it. 
The memoir has this poetical atmosphere; the life itself, 
an English country life, reminds one of what Fitzgerald 
writes of the County of Suffolk — "Now I say that all 
this shows that we in this Suffolk are not so completely 
given over to prose and turnips as some would have us. 
I always said that, being near the sea, and being able to 
catch a glimpse of it from the tops of hills and of houses, 
redeemed Suffolk from dullness, and at all events that our 
turnip fields, dull in themselves, were at least set all 
round with an undeniably poetic element." 

Tennyson does not touch at all upon Fitzgerald's 
most marked trait. He was an Englishman of the closest 
attachment to things English. He never went out of the 
country but once, and then to the Netherlands, where 
he had a miserable sojourn, and he was thankful beyond 
most travelers when he got home again. He began life 
with this strong prepossession in an acute form. It 
breaks out early in life, when he excepts only Raphael 
for admiration among foreign artists, and he sums up 
the matter on the side of art at once — "To depict the 
true old English gentleman is as great a work as to depict 
a Saint John, and I think in my heart I would rather 
have the former than the latter." The most complete 
expression of his patriotic feeling is a real British burst, 
as characteristic as American spread-eagleism: "Well, 
say as you will, there is not and never was such a country 
as old England — never were there such a Gentry as 
the English. They will be the distinguishing Mark and 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 191 

Glory of England in History, as the Arts were of Greece, 
and War of Rome. I am sure no travel would carry me 
to any land so beautiful as the good sense, justice, and 
liberality of my good countrymen make this." He 
even writes to Frederick Tennyson abroad that he hopes 
the English travelers are "as proud and disagreeable as 
ever." He naturally thought the country was going to 
the dogs. He was not a Jingoist: he thinks, on the con- 
trary, that the world may justly resent British inter- 
ference "all over the Globe," and piously wishes that 
England were a "little, peaceful, unambitious, trading 
nation like — the Dutch!" Even his taste in music was 
affected: "I grow every day more and more to love only 
the old 'God Save the King' style." 

The point must be insisted upon because this British 
instinct lay at the roots of his content with a voluntarily 
restricted life. He had, besides, a bent for eccentricity. 
He early declares that he has made a discovery for him- 
self and is going to be "a great bear." Used though 
the phrase is with youthful exaggeration and humor, it 
marks the turn of his nature, and in a sense he fulfilled 
the prediction. Of his boyhood we learn nothing, as 
he was well out of college when he began the congenial 
habit of writing these friendly letters, which from the 
first are remarkable for literary judgment and are warm 
with true feeling. He was then, however, no more than 
a reader of books and a collector of fine poems from the 
best writers for his private Parnassus. One confidential 
passage gives a strangely vivid sense of how the young 
of each generation start together. He has been writing 
of Tennyson, who had been visiting him and keeping 
him laughing with his "droll" little humors and "grumpi- 
nesses," and he goes on to say that he felt a "sense of 



192 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

depression at times from the overshadowing of a so much 
more lofty intellect than my own; this (though it may 
seem vain to say so) I never experienced before, though 
I have often been with much greater intellects; but I 
could not be mistaken in the universality of his mind; 
and perhaps I have derived some benefit in the now 
more distinct consciousness of my dwarfishness." He 
was then twenty-six and Tennyson was his junior by a 
year. Most of what is told of his younger days comes 
in the way of reminiscence in after life. Among these 
anecdotes one, drawn out by Spedding's death, is very 
lifelike. He and Tennyson visited Spedding at his 
father's house, and the elder Spedding is described as 
not altogether pleased at the sight of his son consulting 
with the poet over the "Morte d'Arthur," "Lord of Bur- 
leigh," and other pieces then in MS. Unfortunately he 
had known Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and other 
"poets" without esteeming them, and as Fitzgerald 
played chess with Mrs. Spedding, and the daffodils 
danced outside the hall-door — "Well, Mr. F.," he 
would say, "Mr. Tennyson reads and Jem criticises; is 
that it?" But, notwithstanding the banter, he was kind 
enough to his son's friends. Such little pictures are one 
of the traits of the book. 

It was not long before these friends submitted to the 
common fate and were separated by the different tenor 
of their lives. They met occasionally, but they did not 
live together; Fitzgerald was the only one who liked to 
send friendly letters, and so communication lessened to 
one epistle a year, and died out altogether. He went 
to live in the country, in a damp lodge outside his father's 
park, and he always had such bachelor quarters. He was 
intimate at first with old Bernard Barton, the Quaker 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 193 

poet, whom, we believe, Lamb advised to throw himself 
over a precipice rather than cultivate the muse; and 
afterwards he liked to visit with the parson, a son of 
the poet Crabbe. Fitzgerald is described then as being 
a grave man, middle-aged at thirty-six, not seemingly 
very happy, though amusing at times in conversation. 
He rose early, read or wrote standing at a desk, had his 
dinner of vegetables and pudding, walked with his Skye 
terrier, and ended the evening with the Bartons or the 
Crabbes, singing glees with the children at the latter 
house and joining the parson over his cigar. He did not 
visit with the neighboring gentry. He describes it all 
himself: "A little Bedfordshire — a little Northampton 
— a little more folding of the hands — the same faces — 
the same fields — the same thoughts occurring at the 
same turns of road — this is all I have to tell of; nothing 
at all added — but the summer gone." As for "Alfred," 
he adds, "hydropathy has done its worst; he writes the 
names of his friends in water." 

But this was not as empty a life as it seems; vegetarian 
though he was, "none could say that Lenten fare made 
Lenten thought." He had many interests of the culti- 
vated man. He had been fond of the theater and con- 
cert in London, and he was still devoted to music; he 
was a buyer of pictures, and full of enthusiasm for those 
he liked, and he cultivated the acquaintance of Lawrence. 
The stream of some friendship never ceased to brighten 
the ways he walked in; and in books and nature he had 
as large a liberty as is often conferred on a man. The 
touches of nature are not infrequent in these jottings 
down of his moments, and they are often exquisite in 
feeling: "I am going this evening to eat toasted cheese 
with that celebrated poet, Bernard Barton. ... It 



194 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

blows a harrico, as Theodore Hook used to say, and will 
rain before I get to Woodbridge. Those poor, mistaken 
lilac-buds there out of the window! and an old robin, 
ruffled up to his thickest, sitting mournfully under them, 
quite disheartened!" Or again, in London, he writes: 
"I feel pleasure in dipping down into the country and 
rubbing my hand over the cool dew of the pastures, as 
it were." But such tender directness of description or 
felicity in phrase is a constant quantity, and belonged 
so much to his mind that he could not help blabbing out 
his delight. We quote a few more lines, less for the pic- 
ture than the style; he had put away all books except 
Omar, but this, he says, "I could not help looking over 
in a paddock covered with buttercups and brushed by a 
delicious breeze, while a dainty racing filly of W. Browne's 
came startling up to wonder and snuff about me." For 
feeling like this expressed so well, one goes back far in 
literary taste, and in such passages we recognize the Eng- 
lish that Tennyson praised so highly in speaking of 
the boat-race in "Euphranor"; it is — what so little de- 
scription of nature now is — free from self-consciousness, 
and not by design, but by the character of the writer. 

One is prepared to hear that Fitzgerald's tastes were 
not those of his generation in the case of many of the 
more notable authors. The most striking instance is 
that of Tennyson. He did not like "The Princess," nor 
"In Memoriam," nor the "Idyls," nor the dramas; he 
wished that there had been nothing after the 1842 volume, 
or he seems to fancy that he wished it; the poems after 
that date were below their author's destiny — that is 
apparently the feeling which underlies his judgment. 
But he expressed himself with great freedom : " 'In 
Memoriam,' " he says, "has the air of being evolved by 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 195 

a Poetical Machine of the highest order; ... the Im- 
petus, the Lyrical oestrus, is gone." He asks what it 
can do except make all of us "sentimental." His last 
word almost is that Tennyson's genius has been injured 
by over-elaboration. It made no difference to him that 
other friends told him that this was perverseness, and that 
no one agreed with him. One part of the secret has 
just been hinted at: he worshiped — it is hardly too 
strong a word — Tennyson's power; he thought it was 
wasted on inadequate objects. This is the one human 
enthusiasm of the book. If he reads of Thucydides at 
Amphipolis, it is to burst out with, "Fancy old Hallam 
sticking to his gun at a Martello Tower This was the 
way to write well; and the way to make literature re- 
spectable. Oh, Alfred Tennyson, could you but have 
the luck to be put to such employment No man would 
do it better; a more heroic figure to head the defenders 
of his country could not be." He wishes for Tennyson's 
voice to awake "Marathonian men" instead of "mum- 
bling" over "The Princess" and "In Memoriam." He 
longs "to take twenty years off Alfred's shoulders, 
and set him up in his youthful glory. . . . He is the 
same magnanimous, kindly, delightful fellow as ever, 
uttering by far the finest prose sayings of any one." 
There is no cooling of loyalty, one perceives, only the 
feeling that the performance is less than it should have 
been, the man more than his work. 

This, no doubt, counts in analyzing the unfavorable 
criticism of Fitzgerald; but it was also the fact (and 
here lies the other half of the secret), that Fitzgerald's 
literary taste was distinctly old-fashioned — not modern, 
not contemporary at all, but in a strict sense was classi- 
cal, and proceeded upon the universal canon of literature. 



196 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

It is not meant, of course, that he was confined to Latin 
and Greek standards as expressed in ancient literature, 
but to the universal standard common to all great litera- 
ture. Tennyson met his simple and pure taste and his 
unromantic (but not unpoetic) nature, in much; but in 
his later and pronounced manner he offended Fitzgerald's 
taste, both in matter and style. Other poets yet more 
strictly bound to their times and themselves than Tenny- 
son naturally meet with no mercy at Fitzgerald's bar. 
He swept them — left nameless in these letters — to 
the namelessness that these blanks foretell, with as abso- 
lute a fiat as Carlyle ever used in similar cases. There 
is, too, one is compelled to think, something of truth in 
his friend's frank statement that he was "perverse." He 
set up for a man of taste — it was the only claim he put 
forward. He was not a genius, but he had taste, which, 
according to his aphorism, is the feminine of genius, and, 
being thus in his own eyes a critic by self-calling, he was, 
as Tennyson objects in his poem, "overnice." He was 
too much affected by the hair's-breadth lack of per- 
fection in comparison with what was done. This is 
somewhat overstated, but it expresses well enough the 
element of error. After all, the main point is that mod- 
ern poetry did not appeal to him. 

This case of Tennyson is dwelt upon because it is 
illustrative of the unfavorable criticism to be found here 
and of its sources. It is criticism that well deserves 
to be understood and to be laid to heart, for it will help 
any one of real perception to a simpler and purer taste 
in poetry. The criticism which is favorable, however, 
far outweighs the fault-finding. Fitzgerald liked to write 
about what he enjoyed, and he enjoyed the best. The 
classics he read all his life with evident zest, and was 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 197 

so seized by ^Eschylus and Sophocles that he could only 
free himself by translating them. He fell into a study 
of Spanish which resulted also in translation from Cal- 
deron, of course in his peculiar style of rendering; and 
then he began with Persian, out of which he gave us the 
"Omer" and other pieces of interest. This was a considera- 
ble amount of work, and, in connection with the editing 
of Crabbe and the delightful dialogue of "Euphranor," 
not to speak of minor matters, they show he was far from 
being an idler in his leisure. His readings in English 
were constant, also ; and his taste was that which requires 
for itself "the best books." He found the tradition of 
the past as to the value of these great works in harmony 
with his own judgment; and at the end of his life he was 
more and more deeply sworn to Cervantes and Sir Walter 
Scott, Shakespeare, Boccaccio, and in general those au- 
thors who have best drawn human life with laughter 
as well as tears. It is interesting, finally, to note in a 
man so attached to the great works of literature that, 
though the friend of Thackeray, he was also delighted 
with Dickens and with other prose-writers of his own 
time; but in poetry he admitted only Tennyson and his 
two brothers, Frederick and Charles. 

Nothing can be said of the interesting episode of his 
exploration of Naseby field (where he found a skull with 
a bit of the iron heel of the conqueror in it), with its 
sequel in Carlyle's friendly regard, which remained un- 
broken to the end. The veering of his judgment in re- 
spect to Carlyle is also noticeable, for at first he had 
no good words for him. Something, too, should be said 
of his less-known friends, and especially of the captain 
of his lugger, whom he generously assisted, and whom he 
thought so much of as to get Lawrence to do his head — 



198 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

"with that complexion which Montaigne calls f vif, male 
et flamboyant,' blue eyes and strictly auburn hair, . . . 
head of the large type, ... a Gentleman of Nature's 
grandest Type, . . . made in the mold of what a Hu- 
manity should be, Body and Soul, a poor Fisherman. 
. . . This is altogether the Greatest Man I have 
known." Such are some of the phrases which he showered 
upon his Viking. There are traces, too, of a sympathy 
with the poor in their work and their suffering, and 
of a true sense of humble life. He was much touched by 
reality wherever he came near it. His letters are just and 
beautiful in expression when he mentions any matter of 
real sorrow, any bereavement or misfortune. His heart 
remained tender, and he was loyal to his friends. When 
Spedding died, they had been separated twenty years, and 
the genuineness of his feeling of loss which comes to the 
surface in two or three letters, is a remarkable illustration 
of the vitality of silent affection. When Tennyson came 
to see him after an equal interval of time, it was as if 
time had not been. His isolation from these old friends 
is somewhat pathetic, but he was without reproach, since 
the neglect to write was on their part. Tennyson never 
would write letters, and Spedding was a positive man 
given to a utilitarian rule of life, who would only write 
when there was some definite question to be answered. 

Notwithstanding this, Fitzgerald had friends who came 
as others went, as is the way of the world, and they were 
always scholars and gentlemen, the best of their kind. 
Naturally, however, the tribute which will be most ob- 
served in his memory is that of the famous literary men 
who found him companionable in early and middle life. 
Tennyson wrote of him: "I had no truer friend; he was 
one of the kindliest of men, and I have never known one 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 199 

of so fine and delicate a wit." Thackeray, being asked 
not long before he died which of his old friends he loved 
most, told his daughter: "Why, dear old Fitz, to be sure"; 
and there is among these letters one from Thackeray 
asking Fitzgerald to attend to his literary affairs if he 
should meet with accident in America, which would be 
a treasure coming from any man. Of the wit which 
Tennyson mentions there is little in the correspondence, 
but the character which won and merited the regard and 
affection of friends shines upon every page. The 
modesty with which he withdrew his name from the 
public eye was probably a congenital trait, and it affected 
his whole way of life. He grew more unwilling even to 
go to London, finding only cleverness there, and the 
theater or opera was less able to attract him as years 
went on. The exhibitions, in which at one time he took 
great interest, became a bore. Reynolds, Constable, and 
Gainsborough are the leading topics in art, and in music 
Handel seems to have been most congenial, though he 
writes of the others with just judgment. His life, taken 
altogether, was a gratification of refined tastes and a 
simple exercise of unpretending virtues among his friends 
and acquaintances. 

Original genius he did not possess, but his apprecia- 
tiveness of excellence was sound and true; whenever he 
praises, one is compelled to assent. He spent the most 
of his energy in endeavoring to render foreign classics 
into English in such a way as to make them effective to 
modern taste. He did not write for those who could read 
the originals. He professed only to make adaptations 
rather than translations, and he cut and modified with 
a free hand. Scholars have praised his work for what 
it strove to accomplish, accepting the limitations which 



200 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

his taste imposed upon it. Taste, however developed 
and refined, is still not genius, and it must be frankly 
acknowledged that he has not given us just what Cal- 
deron, iEschylus, and Sophocles created. His Persian 
translations vary even more widely from the originals. 
"Omar Khayyam" is a celebrated work in his version, 
but it is largely his own work, and it may be hoped that 
the other translations will become better known, for, 
without having the commanding qualities of Omar, they 
are studded with charming stories in verse, and not 
encumbered with Eastern moods of thought so much as 
to disturb a Western mind. The two poetical speeches 
of the English and Roman generals with their fine move- 
ment, are also a kind of translation — from prose to 
verse, though nearer to original composition. The dia- 
logue of 'Euphranor' is the most considerable work of 
his own hand, and reaches what seems to be his ideal of 
writing — fine feeling in fine English. His name, how- 
ever, is linked indissolubly with literature, in all prob- 
ability, only in one work, the "Omar"; his memory will 
always be associated with the Tennyson group; besides, 
and by virtue of it, he will long be remembered by those 
who prize simplicity, refinement, and moral worth above 
the more vulgar quality of distinction. 



HAWTHORNE 



This story of Hawthorne's home-life, his relations to 
mother, sister, wife, and child, varies and deepens our 
impression of his personality, while it does nothing to 
disturb the tradition of his solitary genius. That he 
was born among peculiar people, and bred under an 
eminently unsocial domestic regime, is well known; but 
in this his circumstances were not so exceptional as might 
be thought. Madam Hawthorne, self-immured in her 
mysterious chamber, like the Aunt Mary whom Emerson 
describes in one of his posthumous papers, was not merely 
idiosyncratic: she was a legacy from the New England 
past, and in her own day and generation was not out of 
place ; and her son, at a time when children were believed 
to be as happy as was proper without aid from their 
elders, and no thought was had of making companions 
of growing lads, was left to himself and his playmates 
much as other boys were. The family, it is true, seem 
to have reached the highest point of uncommunicative- 
ness consistent with dwelling under the same roof; and, 
especially after Hawthorne's return from college, where 
he had proved a companionable fellow enough in his 
own set, this hermit-life within doors must have been 
powerful to confirm the hereditary taint of solitariness 
in him, derived from his Puritan and sea-going ances- 
tors. Thrown back on the resources of his own spirit, 
he let solitude have its way with him, and thus he be- 



202 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

came well acquainted with the gray rocks of the Marble- 
head promontory and the lovely reaches of the wooded 
Beverly shore, and, by the help of their silence, he made 
imagination the habit of his mind. 

Meanwhile, in another New England household, also 
with a touch of peculiarity, was growing the woman who 
was to take Hawthorne out of this homelessness and 
found a family hearth of a very different character from 
that he had known. This woman was Sophia Peabody, 
a sister of Elizabeth P. Peabody; and the touch of 
peculiarity that has been alluded to showed itself mainly 
in connection with transcendentalism — a species of in- 
tellectual measles which was then very contagious among 
the feminine minds of the neighborhood. Sophia's 
mother was a woman of great good sense, and her father 
a kindly and helpful man, both of them excellent parents 
of the softer New England type. She herself was an 
invalid, subject to an "acute nervous headache which 
lasted uninterruptedly from her twelfth to her thirty- 
first year." She was an amateur in painting, more- 
over, and she wrote a journal, and she read books: "I 
read Degerando, Fenelon, St. Luke and Isaiah, Young, 
the 'Spectator,' and Shakespeare's 'Comedy of Errors,' 
'Taming of the Shrew,' 'All's Well that Ends Well,' and 
'Love's Labor's Lost,' besides doing some sewing to-day." 
This, in the case of a girl of nineteen, who is said never 
to have been without pain for an hour, was a good stint. 
She was not without enjoyment, too, in an epistolary 
way: "I have written a long letter to Miss Loring this 
evening," she says at the same time, "with the moon all 
the while in my face. This is revelry!" As an example 
of "the growth and advancement of her mind" during the 
next eight years, her son prints further extracts from her 



HAWTHORNE 203 

confidential papers, of which these two, written when 
Hawthorne was falling in love with her, will suffice : 

"Last night I was left in darkness — soft, grateful dark- 
ness — and my meditations turned upon my habit of viewing 
things through the 'couleur de rose' medium, and I was ques- 
tioning what the idea of it was — for since it was real there 
must be some good explanation of it — when suddenly, like 
a night-blooming cereus, my mind opened, and I read in 
letters of paly golden-green words to this effect: The beautiful 
and good and true are the only real and abiding things — the 
only proper use of the soul and nature. Evil and ugliness and 
falsehood are abuses, monstrous and transient." 

"I have read Carlyle's 'Miscellanies' with deep delight. The 
complete manner in which he presents a man is wonderful. 
He is the most impartial of critics, I think, except Mr. Emer- 
son. Every subject interesting to the soul is touched in these 
essays. Such a reach of thought produced no slight stir within 
me. I am rejoiced that Carlyle is coming to America. But 
I cannot help feeling that Emerson is diviner than he: Mr. 
Emerson is Pure Tone." 

While Sophia was engaged in such meditations, and 
the romancer, having discovered his occupation, was at 
hard labor handling coal and salt in the Boston Custom- 
house, their fate found them out and they confessed 
they had loved at first sight. It was impossible, how- 
ever, that such an invalid as Sophia should be married, 
and it was agreed that their union must wait the cessa- 
tion of the headache that had lasted without intermit- 
tance nearly a score of years. Love was good to his 
new devotees, it scarcely need be said; the cure was soon 
affected, and with the headache, apparently, disappeared 
also that peculiar Bostonian malady already mentioned. 
There is nothing more about "paly golden-green letters," 
or Mr. Emerson in his incarnation as "Pure Tone." 



204 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Sophia became a faithful wife and a kind mother, the 
center of a very charming home. 

It is the history of this home that Julian Hawthorne 
has written. By the help of his father's very copious 
notes of the sayings and doings and looks of the children 
— Una, Julian, and Rose — and with his own recollec- 
tions of boyhood to draw upon besides for the later 
period, he has taken us into the intimacy of the house- 
hold, and confided the charm and dignity and wisdom 
of Hawthorne's fatherhood. And this he has done in 
a narrative so instinct with tender respect and unques- 
tioning love, so full of a frank, boyish spirit, of the loy- 
alty that has never contemplated the King's doing wrong, 
that the critic is constrained to take his point of view and 
accept this biography, not as a critical and complete 
life, but as a friendly confidence. It is, indeed, so far 
as the children are concerned, a lovely story, whether the 
thin tent of the family was pitched by the Concord 
River, or the Salem wharves, or among the Berkshire 
hills, or whatever the place of their sojourning — Liver- 
pool, or Rome, or the Redcar Sands, or the Wayside, in 
which the last days were spent. Some passages, of Haw- 
thorne's own writing, are masterly. There could be 
nothing more perfect, as mere literary description, than 
the minute narration of the play of Una and Julian while 
Madam Hawthorne lay dying; nothing more pathetic 
than the scene where Hawthorne himself kneels by his 
mother's dark bedside and takes her hand, and feels that 
last dead strain of the cords of birth across all the strange- 
ness of their divided lives, while the childish laugh and 
prattle float up from the sunny yard below. And Julian, 
in contributing to the account of his own boyhood, has 
not injured its simplicity and health by the intrusion of 



HAWTHORNE 205 

any after self-consciousness. From the moment that he 
comes under cognizance as a lump of flesh to the last 
fine scene, when he runs over from Harvard to ask a 
favor and goes out with "light upon him from his father's 
eyes," not knowing it was the last glimpse, he is merely 
Hawthorne's boy who once wished that his father didn't 
write books. But, naturally, all this is contained in an 
account of small matters, little events, walks and swims, 
and books by the fireside and fairy stories on the sands, 
and not unfrequently the touch of nature is to be found 
in a mass of irrelevant trivialities. 

Yet this happy home of Hawthorne's maturity was 
not more exceptional, for the time and social state in 
which he found himself, than had been the case with 
the lonely isolation of his boyhood, with which it stands 
in such effective contrast. In each, although its pecu- 
liar quality of reserve or freedom was accented, there 
was only a divergence in degree from a New England 
type. Madam Hawthorne, and all that her name stands 
for in Hawthorne's life, belong to Puritanism; his own 
home was in the highest sense humane; and in view of 
this contrast it is easy to see why Julian, with his fresh 
and exclusive remembrance of the sunshiny interior of 
Hawthorne's latter years, should protest very loudly 
against the not uncommon opinion that his father was 
the victim of a certain morbidity. On the contrary, he 
says, never was there such health, sanity, vigor — all 
manly traits and qualities, capacities and energies. Cer- 
tainly, by comparison with the life out of which 
Hawthorne came, and perhaps even more clearly by 
comparison with the Transcendentalists, the Brook-Farm 
reformers, the prophets and prophetesses among whom he 
was thrown, moral health and mental sanity and the 



2 o6 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

vigor of an incorruptible common-sense seem to be pe- 
culiarly his possession — one is almost tempted to say, 
his alone. When a man of his spiritual insight and sens- 
ibility, so open to fine suggestions, so tenacious of im- 
palpable meanings, could say of a friend like Emerson: 
"Mr. Emerson is a great searcher for facts, but they seem 
to melt away and become unsubstantial in his grasp," 
the criticism goes far to reveal his own balance, the con- 
tinence and repose of his own mind. He saw clearer and 
deeper than the theorizers into the transcendent mystery 
there is in the soul's life, not only because he had more 
delicate impressions and simpler perceptions, but also 
because his relation therewith was vital and not merely 
intellectual, and, instead of being a subject of spasmodic 
reflections, shared in the inflexible reality of direct moral 
experience. He was not one of the Concord men, and 
that fact by itself helps a good deal his son's claim that 
he was not fairly open to any charge of crankiness. Yet 
that there was some morbidity in his blood, a tendency 
to certain subjects of investigation, a bent toward certain 
moods of sentiment, a preoccupation of his mind with 
death, evil, sin, and the fantasies of an overwrought 
spiritual sensibility, can hardly be seriously questioned. 

In the same way, Julian does not make out that his 
father was essentially a social man. Even inside the 
family circle, companionable as he was with his children, 
it is to be remembered that they had scarcely reached 
the period of full, separate consciousness in their lives 
when he died. In his social relations with his friends 
he was, it is true, acceptable, but it is here that the 
biography is weakest; what is given is very meager and 
commonplace, and there is an utter failure to show any 
raison d'etre in these friendships — from what attrac- 



HAWTHORNE 207 

tion they took their origin, or in what strength was their 
bond, or in what charm they had their sweetness. In 
his shyness with strangers there was something of pure 
rusticity: one notices that he is always thinking what 
he should say or what he might have replied, or by some 
other remark shows that he is always conscious of an 
effort in assuming the social relation with a stranger of 
his own rank. Toward some who are associated with 
his circle, it is plain he was far from being on open 
terms. Ellery Channing, for example, to judge by the 
letter of that poet's inditing, could not have been very 
near to him, and Margaret Fuller must have been 
grievously deceived by his silence. One would have 
thought that the denunciation launched at Froude for 
publishing Carlyle's "Reminiscences" with as little regard 
to reputations as Carlyle himself had, might have de- 
terred others from doing likewise; but now it seems 
duobtful whether it may not be acknowledged as a lite- 
rary canon that the laws of good breeding do not extend 
beyond the grave, or, to put it in a still more compre- 
hensive form, that no courtesy is to be expected of a 
dead man. In this biography there are two character- 
izations of the kind that are usually sealed up until the 
year 1950. That of Tupper — the most comical and 
diverting thing in the world — that of Margaret Fuller 
(what is said of Count d'Ossoli is shamefully wrong), 
show how Hawthorne's humor, secreted in his own breast, 
helped to keep him free from the literary coteries, the 
shams and intellectual afflictions of his community: 

"It was such an awful joke, that she should have resolved — 
in all sincerity, no doubt — to make herself the greatest, 
wisest, best woman of the age. And to that end she set to 
work on her strong, heavy, unpliable, and, in many respects, 



208 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

defective and evil nature, and adorned it with a mosaic of 
admirable qualities, such as she chose to possess; putting in 
here a splendid talent and there a moral excellence, and polish- 
ing each separate piece, and the whole together, till it seemed 
to shine afar and dazzling all who saw it. She took credit to 
herself for having been her own Redeemer, if not her own 
Creator; and, indeed, she was far more a work of art than 
any of Mozier's statues. But she was not working in an 
inanimate substance, like marble or clay; there was some- 
thing within her that she could not possibly come at, to re- 
create or refine it; and, by and by, this rude old potency 
bestirred itself, and undid all her labor in the twinkling of an 
eye. On the whole, I do not know but I like her the better 
for it, because she proved herself a vety woman after all, 
and fell as the weakest of her sisters might." 

No, not with Margaret Fuller, nor Ellery Channing, 
nor even with Emerson and the geniuses he was forever 
picking up in the highway or the potato-field, any more 
than with the politicians of the Custom-house, could 
Hawthorne enter into absolutely free social relations. 
One suspects that his college and his English friends were 
more accessible to him, because they were wholly un- 
related to that part of his nature which fed the flame of 
his genius. That genius was solitary; and throughout 
the long narrative of his cheerful and intimate life with 
the children, one sees that he kept his privacy always, 
and the witness of it is that path beneath the pines on 
the brow of the hill, worn by his feet in his daily evening 
walk by himself as he watched the sunset flush and fade 
in the west. 

This biography is like Mr. James's "Hawthorne" in 
that it fails to give any history of that immortal part of 
the man in which the world takes interest. Julian's 
point of view is completely shown when he says of Haw- 



HAWTHORNE 209 

thorne, "If he had never written a line, he would still have 
possessed, as a human being, scarcely less interest and 
importance than he does now"; and adds that his father's 
books struck him, when he came to read them, "as being 
but a somewhat imperfect reflection of certain regions 
of his father's mind with which he had become other- 
wise familiar." One is pleased, for the boy's sake, that 
to him the genius was lost in the father, but to the world 
it is just the contrary; and to many it may prove a 
disappointment to find only a delightful father (not 
wholly unique, be it added), where they had hoped for 
some inner glimpses of a fine genius. Hawthorne, the 
romancer, was as remote from his domestic life as from 
the provincial civilization on which Mr. James dwelt. 
Indeed, the latter's account of Hawthorne, not to speak 
it profanely, seemed as if he had made a very careful 
realistic study — a "portrait," he would probably have 
called it — of a certain little Judean town we all know 
of, and exclaimed, "Lo! how parochial Nazareth was!" 
Mr. James might find much in these volumes to support 
his thesis ; he might smile to read, for example, that Haw- 
thorne owned no picture until he was in middle life, and 
then, when Sophia painted him one or two, which he 
thought very beautiful, he wrote that perhaps they had 
better be put into mahogany frames to match the furni- 
ture, probably (one half overhears Mr. Howells adding) 
of the black hair-cloth variety. But Hawthorne's genius 
was a thing apart from all that, just as it was apart 
from his children's lives. It was of the imagination, 
pure and simple, and had no root in culture whether 
meager or rich; and except as his genius expressed itself 
through art, it seems to have been as reticent as 
Shakespeare's. 



2io LITERARY MEMOIRS 



II 



It may be true, as Mr. Conway remarks, that "there 
are few authors with whom the world is more intimate 
than the one supposed to have most shunned its inti- 
macy." The confessions of the Note-books, the reve- 
lations made by his son and his son-in-law, and the not 
inconsiderable mass of reminiscences in other volumes, 
may lead one to this broad statement; but on finishing 
Mr. Conway's account one still finds Hawthorne's ac- 
tual life remote, and is not a whit nearer to any knowl- 
edge of that genius which, even in his solitary life, seemed 
to make a new solitude of its own. 

The story is in itself most depressing, mainly because 
of the circumstances which it records. Hawthorne ap- 
pears to have been sensible that his infelicity had its 
beginnings in the period of his seclusion at Salem. It 
does not seem that in boyhood or youth he was unsociable 
or eccentric; the absence of companions, however, after 
he left college, the increasing habit of a naturally brood- 
ing genius, the sense that he was making no impression 
on the world as year by year passed by, must have de- 
veloped in him (perhaps without his taking notice of 
it at once) the reticence and withdrawal into self which 
were traits of his Puritan and sea-faring blood. Dr. 
Loring's account of the neglect of him by Salem people 
(for the city was a place of some intellectual culture) 
is very much to the point. He was not known as an 
author, and he was not of the sort that makes friends. 
There was nothing extraordinary in his being "let alone." 
The same thing would happen to-day in any community. 
Hawthorne's isolation proceeded from himself. Nor 



HAWTHORNE 211 

does it appear that his "shyness" was merely the attri- 
bute of peculiar genius. Self-consciousness and pride, 
as well as temperament, went to its making. How much 
he prized success as a proof of manliness is clear from 
that letter to Hillard in which he accepts his friend's 
assistance, but calls it "bitter," and adds that "ill-success 
in life is really and justly a matter of shame." The sense 
of failure, as something by no means remotely possible 
in his case, was as present to him as his shadow for years. 
His withdrawal from literary men in particular is notice- 
able. On the other hand, the ease with which he met 
men of a rougher mold, the ordinary people of the com- 
mon sort, and the pleasure he plainly took in the contact 
with them, are not less significant. He had no need to 
remember that he was "the obscurest literary man in 
America" in the presence of men to whom all literary 
men were perhaps equally obscure. He felt, doubtless, 
also in their company that relief from the "bodiless crea- 
tion" which occupied his mind when by himself; but the 
point of interest is, that there was no "shyness" in his 
intercourse with these companions. The lack of recog- 
nition of his genius, and a manly spirit offended by its 
lack of seeming efficiency, certainly aggravated unfortu- 
nate tendencies in his disposition. 

The extent to which society is responsible for its sins 
of omission in the way of not at once knowing and en- 
couraging its men of literary genius, is a question too 
often discussed only from the point of view of the poor 
author. There was a tendency to ascribe the difficulties 
of our literary men in the past, to the lack of an 
international copyright. Mr. Conway gives unlimited 
influence to this fact in discussing the trials of Haw- 
thorne. It may fairly be questioned, whether the un- 



212 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

known writer of short stories under various signatures, 
in various periodicals, would have greatly benefited in 
his early days by the best of copyright regulations 
between England and America. As it was, he had 
the kindest assistance in getting before the world, so 
far as friends could give any. Horatio Bridge pri- 
vately assumed the financial responsibility for his col- 
lected volume of tales, and, so far as criticism could 
be helpful, he had Longfellow and Hillard to plead his 
cause with all the warmth of friendship, in addition to 
the weight of their criticism. At a later time Fields was 
the most stimulating and generous of publishers. Apart 
from literature, also, Hawthorne's friends endeavored 
repeatedly to obtain office for him, and succeeded in giv- 
ing him custom-house appointments in Boston and 
Salem; and when the latter was cancelled, they gave him 
money in the most unassuming and considerate way. 
Finally he received the Liverpool Consulate from his 
friend President Pierce. 

It is true that there is much meanness of a political 
color in his holding of these offices, which were in them- 
selves little fitted for him, and also that they killed litera- 
ture in him while he held them. Mr. Conway thinks 
there was something ignoble in the price paid for the 
Consulate, namely, the campaign biography of Pierce, 
and Hawthorne clearly thought it an unwelcome task; 
but there is no inherent impropriety in a man of letters 
writing a fitting life of his friend who happens to be a can- 
didate for the Presidency. It may be presumed that if he 
regards him sufficiently to own him as a friend, he can 
find enough to praise without compromising his own 
integrity; and if at the same time he serves a political 
cause in which he believes, so much the more reason for 



HAWTHORNE 213 

his doing his part as friend and citizen. It is unpleasing 
to know that Hawthorne's opinions upon slavery were 
wrong, but not to know that he expressed them; and 
we cannot help thinking that it is the character of Pierce, 
and not the act of Hawthorne, which makes this incident 
so unpalatable to Mr. Conway. Had the story been 
the life of Lincoln, feelings with regard to it would 
probably be of a different sort. Hawthorne was reluc- 
tant to write the book, and he was quite as reluctant, 
no doubt, to apply for office, or for retention in office, 
by the customary channels. His political servitude for 
bread must have always been repugnant; but Govern- 
ment did the best it could for him under the spoils sys- 
tem, his friends were active and interested always, and 
his publishers and editors seem to have paid him all just 
dues. To complain that the nation did not provide 
proper place or pension for Hawthorne, when it provides 
them for no literary man, or that society did not buy 
his books in sufficient quantities to support him before 
he became famous, seems beside the point. Literature 
is not with us a matter of national concern or of social 
patronage; it stands on its own bottom, and, under 
American ideas, is likely to do so. 

The fact is, that the notion that the country suffers 
some disgrace in consequence of the domestic hardships 
and modest purse of Hawthorne and others in the pur- 
suit of literature, is a relic of the paternal tradition of 
aristocratic society, which made men of letters a favored 
class, and gave them charity much in the same spirit 
as those who would exempt soldiers from the civil-service 
examinations. Hawthorne received the same treatment 
as every other citizen. Mr. Conway's assumption, there- 
fore, that the country was in some way responsible for 



2i4 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Hawthorne's troubles, and should have "protected" him 
from them, seems a fundamental error. He suffered 
the not unusual consequences of choosing a precarious 
and ill-paid career, the fruits of which are reaped rather 
by posterity than by the author, but this latter fact is 
one of the greatest inducements to it, under the form of 
fame or of social service. Hawthorne suffered poverty, 
but not injustice; he achieved a unique success, and 
honor with it, at the end, and he receives from his country 
all that he is entitled to — immortal memory. 



LONGFELLOW 

The official biography of Longfellow is characterized 
by its good manners. There is no line in it, any more 
than in his poems, which the poet dying would wish to 
blot, and this is double good fortune. Those who were 
his acquaintances need not fear any disillusion as to 
their place in his real esteem, and those who worshiped 
him from afar will find no appreciable lessening of the 
proper heroic distance between themselves and the object 
of their devotion. At the end, it is as if one had grown 
familiar with the study at Craigie House, had heard the 
poet talk of his past and his books with a discreet sup- 
pression of names not already public by virtue of their 
owner's repute, and had listened to extracts from the 
journals and correspondence, while all the time the doors 
leading out of the library are kept closed. The editor 
— and he is indeed only an editor — adopted that modern 
substitute for autobiography which consists in a selection 
and arrangement of papers written by the man himself 
and connected by the slightest thread of narrative. He 
says in his preface that this method is one by which 
"the reader would best learn how a man of letters spends 
his time and what occupies his thoughts." This plan 
was rigidly adhered to, and consequently the work is 
essentially Longfellow's diary, expanded and illustrated 
in parts by letters, and exhibits to the public the sur- 
face of events and thoughts in the life of a poet, in the 
literary and social environment of Boston, who was one 

211 



2i6 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

of the most cultivated members of the group that gave 
distinction to the period. 

The editor himself describes this life as that of a man 
of letters; and whether or not he meant to distinguish 
sharply between the phases of Longfellow's career as poet 
and as scholar, the effect of the mode of biography chosen 
is to present its subject as a scholar who wrote poetry 
rather than as a poet primarily and always. In nearly 
all accounts of men in whose lives the world takes inter- 
est there are some salient points, some deeds or works or 
incidents which have attracted attention to the individ- 
ual ; but in telling the story in detail the biographer often 
finds difficulty in managing those intervals in which his 
hero's days did not differ from those of ordinary mortals. 
It is in such portions that the much lamented "disillu- 
sion" usually makes itself known. In Longfellow's case 
the writing of a series of poems has drawn the curiosity 
of men toward his personality, and if one would get at 
the true record of his poetic life, that would be the 
biography for which men would care most; but that is 
a very secret matter, and hard both to discover and to 
disclose. Moods visited him and he wrote; but between 
these, and filling up the intervals of his poetic life, was 
a life of letters, and it is this life of which his diary was 
a transcript. This was easy both to record and to pub- 
lish. Longfellow himself tells us what he thought of 
its relative importance in his real history: "How brief 
this chronicle is, even of my outward life. And of my 
inner life, not a word. If one were only sure that one's 
journal would never be seen by any one, and never get 
into print, how different the case would be! But death 
picks the locks of all portfolios and throws the contents 
into the street for the public to scramble after." Waiv- 



LONGFELLOW 217 

ing all question as to the degree of privacy to which a 
poet's life is entitled, let us take it at once on this best 
authority that the diary which is spread before us is 
not the true record of a poet's soul, but the jottings of 
what happened to him in the body, the cities he saw, the 
men and women he met, the scenes of natural beauty and 
childish festival he witnessed, the society he dined and 
talked with, the books he read or wrote, and such of his 
thoughts, sentiments, and moods as he was not unwilling 
that the public should "scramble after." The letters, 
both of his own inditing and from others, which supple- 
ment the diary, will not affect the matter, since they 
belong to the same outer region of life. 

It has generally been believed that Longfellow's life 
was, in its human relations and its social material sur- 
roundings, very charming; in these volumes this opinion 
is sustained by page after page of detail. Whether as 
host or guest, as son, father, or citizen, as stranger or 
as bosom friend, the element of urbanity pervaded his 
character. One finds it only too easy to quote instances 
in which his refined amiableness gave beauty to trivial 
or even mean and intrinsically ugly incidents. This 
social phase of the biography presents our cultivation in 
the intercourse of life with the greatest perfectness which 
it has yet found in any literary record ; the diary, in this 
regard, becomes at once an indispensable part of the 
memoirs of manners. So much is true of it in relation to 
the entire coterie (and it was not a very small band) of 
which Longfellow was one of the members; but beyond 
this, some of the individuals whom he habitually men- 
tions gain in agreeableness by what he has to say of them. 
To take the most notable instance, it is certainly impos- 
sible to lay down the volumes without a much pleasanter 



2i8 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

impression of Charles Sumner's nature than the public 
has thus far entertained. Longfellow was not blind to 
the grandiose quality in his friend, but he writes of him 
so warmly, and displays his attachment in so many ways, 
and insists so often upon the affectionate, humane, and 
simple heart of his Herculean orator, that the statuesque 
memory of the Senator loses something of the chill which 
has belonged to it; and the glimpses one gets of Sumner 
during his frequent visits to Craigie House display him 
in an attractive guise. On the other hand, Sumner's 
friendship seems to have reacted on Longfellow, to de- 
velop in him an interest in politics and to quicken his 
patriotism and enlarge his life with public sympathies. 
The vigor and decision of Longfellow's remarks upon the 
state of the country, the clear and certain tone whenever 
that conflict of "the North wind against the Southern 
pestilence" is spoken of, free him from the doubt which 
has been sometimes indulged, that he secluded himself 
from the great cause of his day more than befitted a com- 
plete man. There is evidence enough in these pages to 
show how intense and constant was his aversion to the 
violence of politics, but in spite of that he entered into 
the spirit of the time, and from an early period had his 
heart in the right place. That this was in some degree 
due to his intimacy with Sumner also seems plain; and 
thus the withdrawal of the veil of privacy from their 
friendship is a gain to the memory of both. 

The social feature in Longfellow's life is, perhaps, 
the leading trait of this work and its most immortal part; 
its charm is to be felt, as the editor justly says, only by 
the perusal of a mutitude of details as they follow day 
by day in the record of the poet's own hand. Scarcely 
second to this, however, is his friendship and association 



LONGFELLOW 219 

with books. From early years his genius was fed from 
this source; and the fortunate accident of time, which 
made his graduation at Bowdoin College coincident with 
a desire on the part of the trustees to found a chair of 
modern languages, determined his fate as a poet who 
should lean much on books. The travels and studies 
which were undertaken to fit himself for the prospective 
professorship may be said to have controlled his career. 
He returned with an admirable literary culture, which 
his later post at Harvard helped to perfect. His read- 
ing from that time was in Continental rather than Eng- 
lish literature, and his poetry showed its influence. It 
is true that he derived many poetic impressions directly 
through the eye in the course of his journeys abroad, 
but for the most part he obtained them through the 
foreign romantic poets and the primitive imagination of 
the northern bards. Had he been in closer contact with 
poetic motives in life itself, he might have been touched 
with passion; but as he felt them at second-hand, as it 
were, he could not lift his mood higher than the region 
of sentiment in that considerable portion of his work 
which deals with medievalism, or with the contemporary 
picturesqueness which still survives in the ruins of the 
Gothic past. In those parts of his poetry where the 
literary influence is less obvious, it is no less potent. 
He was a poet who was developed by books, and not by 
experience; even when he draws from life itself, his 
cunning is bookish. This is the impression already 
given by his works, and his biography makes it deeper. 
It is the "man of letters" whose history is given to us. 
The poetic temperament, nevertheless, is very frequently 
to be observed. The susceptibility of the organization 
to slight changes in the surroundings; the restlessness, 






220 LITERARY MEMOIRS 



the weariness, the fret of the spirit; the delight in receiv- 
ing the impression, and the reluctance to work it over 
into expression; the joy in the vision that comes at the 
rare moment, and the shrinking from the labor of the 
spell that bids it stay forever and be seen of all eyes — 
these and the other common qualities of temperament 
which are often as keen in those who have no faculty of 
language, can be noticed throughout all his long life. 
Longfellow's personality is revealed in these passages, but 
this is merely the light and shadow of life's surface; the 
poetic nature is deeper than that. Probably the point 
of view under which he is viewed in his own diary is 
the correct one, as it is the common one among critics. 
His art, taste, and treatment present the qualities of 
culture; and the poems of which the theme is immediately 
from life about him are just those which cause him to 
be called "the poet of the affections." Outside of home- 
life, books were his inspiration; in other words, generally 
he was sustained in the poetic mood by the beauty and 
virtue of which he read. 

Some light is thrown upon Longfellow's methods of 
composition. He wrote with singular ease; indeed, we 
recollect no poet of equal rank who is known to have been 
blessed with like facility. The shorter poems and the 
"psalms" came to him without effort, sometimes "by whole 
stanzas and not by lines," as he says, and they required 
little correction — usually, it seems, only the strengthen- 
ing of a phrase, but no complete recasting. Similarly with 
the long poems, when his subject was once settled on and 
the work begun, he apparently ran on "trippingly," and 
was satisfied with the corrected first draft. This shows 
admirable mastery as well as speed, while it suggests that 
the feelings of the poet were not excited to any great 



LONGFELLOW 221 

energy. One notes, too, that his subjects for shorter 
poems were frequently selected and the poems written 
later; a practice which generally indicates the forcing 
of a poet's talents. Another characteristic, which is rich 
in suggestions to an analyzer of literary men, is the 
habit he exhibits of setting down in his diary striking 
figures of rhetoric heard in sermons or elsewhere, not 
for the sake of the thought, but of the form. Sometimes 
one comes upon a landscape sketched in a few exquisite 
lines, but such entries do not seem to be notes for 
future work. On the whole, the young poet will not 
learn much about the craft from these volumes; so far 
as anything can be inferred from such slight material, 
equability marked his poetic life as invariably as it did 
his social intercourse. 

Thus this biography in nowise contradicts or modifies 
the popular estimate which was long ago arrived at in 
respect to the poet. It merely sustains and amplifies 
the opinion that has been so often expressed. One is 
not surprised by the gift of the intimate and un- 
guessed record of a noble soul — one of those memories 
which are shrines of the ideal life; but one reads what 
was to be expected, a full and delightful history of the 
external aspects of a lettered life in a refined society, 
as it was led by a man who fulfilled his duties in the varied 
relations of his sphere in a way that made his days 
beautiful and his memory a humanizing influence upon 
all who have any perception of the sources of its charm. 
Our polite literature gains greatly by this. Nevertheless 
these volumes are neither a complete account nor a 
thorough study of Longfellow's life. They occupy in 
his works a similar place to Hawthorne's note-books. 
Autobiography is of necessity an imperfect view of its 



222 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

writer's individuality; it is usually invaluable, it is often 
agreeable, but it is always insufficient. Other memoirs 
must supplement this by showing how he seemed to the 
eyes of others, and the scholar who seeks the genesis of his 
poems must establish the logical connection between the 
life and the works. Of his personality we are not likely 
to know more — one suspects there was really little more 
to know. 

A supplementary volume is principally devoted to 
further illustration of the last fifteen years of the poet's 
career, when he was enjoying the fruits of his fame in 
the formal respect of whatever persons of distinction 
visited our shores, and in the common appreciation of 
his countrymen, whose expressions of esteem were some- 
times more awkward and tedious, but not of less worth. 

Here the poet is seen almost entirely in his mature 
manhood, or perhaps one may fairly say in his old age, 
since his principal original works were all completed 
before the period of the last fifteen years set in. The 
scene practically does not change, the habits of life are 
fixed, the character of the whole has complete harmony. 
This limitation of the view gives a unity of impression 
rarely to be derived from the entire story of an active 
life, and the time, fortunately, is that when Longfellow 
was most attractive. He was most dear to his country 
as an old man, and that is the character in which he is 
presented. His qualities, too, as a man were those which 
age most improves — his universal kindness, his dignity 
of breeding, his reposeful nature, could have full effect 
only with ripe years; and one so given to permanent 
friendships as he was, could not fail to grow happier in 
their exercise, and more noble through them in propor- 
tion as they lasted out time and tide. The story of Long- 



LONGFELLOW 223 

fellow's care for his friend Greene is, in these new 
illustrations of it, one of the delightful episodes of lite- 
rary biography. 

In the way of literature, Longfellow was employed in 
these years upon the drama, and the simplicity of his re- 
marks upon it are instructive, though they provoke a 
smile. He was not efficient as a dramatist, and perhaps 
no competent critic would claim for him dramatic 
genius. He illustrates how far drama has drifted from 
literature. Evidently he had not thought much upon 
the general subject, and was but little skilled in knowl- 
edge of its conditions or in criticism of its aims, methods, 
or effects. One finds him saying, after reading Victor 
Hugo: "Perhaps exaggeration is necessary for the stage; 
I am inclined to think it is. A play, like a bust or statue 
destined for a large room, must be a little larger than 
life." He speaks of Fechter's Hamlet thus: "It is 
pleasant to see anything so like nature on the stage; 
not the everlasting mouthing and ranting." He con- 
templated having the "New England Tragedies" acted, 
and wrote to Fields: "As to anybody's 'adapting' these 
Tragedies for the stage, I do not like the idea of it at all. 
Prevent this, if possible. I should, however, like to 
have the opinion of some good actor — not a sensational 
actor — on the point. I should like to have Booth look 
at them." He actually consulted Bandmann with re- 
gard to the matter, and sets down the answer: "Band- 
mann writes me a nice letter about the Tragedies, but 
says they are not adapted for the stage." That Long- 
fellow should have dreamed of having them acted, shows 
how far out of his element he was in composing them. 
The drama was to him a book, not an art. 

Elsewhere he makes some admirable remarks that 



224 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

spring out of his practice of the art, always wise and 
sometimes profound, as is this: "It is a great mystery 
to many people that an author should reveal to the public 
secrets that he shrinks from telling to his most intimate 
friends." The profound thing in this, if any one should 
not at once understand our application of the word, is 
that he does not stop to explain the "great mystery"; 
to him it is simple enough. But one does not often meet 
with the humor shown in another sentence, in a letter 
to Greene: "You cannot improve a sonnet by making 
it more than fourteen lines long." It is strange that, 
with such playfulness as he exhibits here and there, and 
seems to have indulged in more easily in conversation, 
so little expression of it is to be found in his works. 
For this quality one must go to these volumes, though 
there are scenes in 'The Golden Legend' in which it 
has colored the language and occasionally touched a 
character. The absence of the classical influences in 
his career is noticeable. He finds in the Greek anthology 
only "dead garlands." Of self-criticism there is little. 
He remarks how much learning Sumner brought back 
from Italy, where he himself had gained only impres- 
sions; and the joy of the sentimentalist in remaining 
unconvinced is happily expressed when he says, "I let 
the waves of argument roll on; but all the lilies rise again, 
and are beautiful as before." The poet writing in prose 
is often to be observed in similar figures and sentiments, 
and once or twice there is a brief letter — the one of 

consolation "To ," for example — which is "an 

entire and perfect chrysolite." 

There are others besides Longfellow in these pages. 
As we have remarked before, his life is a memorial of 
a distinguished circle as well as of a man. This impres- 



LONGFELLOW 225 

sion is the stronger because the view of his domestic life 
has been practically suppressed, and he has been shown 
only in his relations with his books and his friends. For- 
tune favored him in both. Sumner, as before, gains 
by all that is told of him or by him. One is tempted to 
think that only Longfellow knew him as a man. The 
letters of "Tom Appleton" afford much that is delectable. 
The description of Mrs. Browning, in 1856, as "a little 
concentrated nightingale living in a bower of curls," has 
the old touch; but best of all is his quoting "an expres- 
sion of Mr. T. Lyman to me years ago: 'The bother of 
the Yankee,' said he, 'is that he rubs badly at the junc- 
tion of soul and body' — as true a thing as ever was 
said, and he not much of a sayer of such things." 



MOTLEY'S CORRESPONDENCE 

The correspondence of an illustrious man, printed 
often more because of his reputation won in some one 
field than for the interest of the letters in themselves, 
is an unfair test of his intellectual or social attractive- 
ness; and in the case of an historian in whose work the 
telling mental qualities are largely different from those 
which give vivacity and brilliancy to impromptu letters, 
this test works with special incompleteness. Motley 
certainly, in addressing his wife, children, and a few 
intimate friends, did not write for immortality. He had 
not the point in style, the variety in interests, the copious- 
ness of opinions which give charm and body to a collec- 
tion of personal letters; and, although he mingled in the 
society of famous men and fine women, and was near to 
great events, he had not that quickness of eye and 
literary power of brief description which could have 
painted the historical scene before him in a picturesque 
and enlivening manner. His methods of conceiving his- 
tory were alien to such a task; he required a large can- 
vas and heroic figures, and something of the breadth that 
goes with the spectacular, before he could deploy his 
mind and imagination. And, besides, there was so con- 
siderable a moral element in his enthusiasms, a sense of 
the forces of history so deeply underlying his serious 
work, that he was to a certain extent disarmed and taken 
at a disadvantage in the presence of the personal, the 
immediate and fragmentary character of passing and 

227 



228 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

incomplete events. These two volumes, consequently, 
notwithstanding their real interest in many ways, are a 
disappointment, if any one looks in them for more than 
illustrations and fuller knowledge of the man's charac- 
ter as it was in daily and private life; but if one is con- 
tent to look for no more than this, they afford the 
portrait of an American whom his fellow-countrymen 
will be more proud to acknowledge after their perusal — 
one who did honor to his country by his personal bear- 
ing among men, by his living and thinking in ordinary 
ways, quite as much as by his literary fame. 

He belongs distinctly to a type that is passing away, 
or at least is suffering such changes outwardly and in- 
wardly as to be taking on a new form. He was one of 
the Boston boys when Boston was more preeminently 
a commercial town, with all that means on the social 
side of life. He was educated at Bancroft's Northamp- 
ton school and at Harvard College, and at an early age 
went to Europe for legal study at German universities 
and for travel, and of all these opportunities he made a 
serious use. The first stirring of his historical imagi- 
nation and the beginning of his fluent and ample style 
may readily be discerned in his pleasant letters home, 
which are what such letters from such a youth should 
be, but have only autobiographical value. The trial of 
his talents in novel-writing, and the reasons why he 
selected the Netherlands as the scene of his historical 
labors, are not touched upon in these letters; the collec- 
tion suffers from the lack of continuity in the series, 
both here and in later life. After his departure for 
Europe, however, there is sufficient material to make out 
plainly and fully the quiet student life he led, the ab- 
sorption of his mind in his work, and the visitings of 



MOTLEY'S CORRESPONDENCE 229 

doubt and melancholy which must attack a solitary 
scholar before the recognition of his powers by others, 
in judgment upon definite work already accomplished, 
gives him confidence in himself. The publication of his 
first volumes, from which he apparently did not hope 
for success, settled his position as an author to be widely 
and seriously regarded, and he set to work to continue 
the series with a renewed energy which shows how much 
he was invigorated by the warm applause he had received. 
Of his labors in the workshop, however, the letters afford 
the very slightest glimpses — they are singularly free 
from the burden of his daily tasks, and, while we might 
desire to see more of the student at his desk, the fear of 
egotism seems to have haunted him to such a degree that 
he spoke of himself and his doings, even to his wife, with 
an uneasy consciousness, and was always glad to drop 
the subject. His occasional separation from his family 
and his long absence from home required him, neverthe- 
less, to give some account of his days, and to this necessity 
the correspondence is mainly due. 

The more entertaining chapters are naturally those 
which detail, almost like a diary of dinner engagements, 
his association with leading persons in England, and, 
more narrowly, upon the Continent. In London society 
he was received with great cordiality from many, and 
with courtesy and distinction from all. What was his 
charm it is impossible to discover from his own account 
of the matter, and others have not told us; but he must 
have been singularly agreeable to have won and kept 
the consideration of the circle in which he moved. He 
was interested first of all in the eminent literary men and 
statesmen of the day, and in the group which was noted 
for kindly disposition to Americans. His portraits of 



230 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

these people lack condensation and vividness; he was 
better at describing a character than a personality, and 
consequently he has not written anything of them spe- 
cially remarkable. It is rather the tone in which he 
speaks than the words he uses which exhibits their im- 
pression on him. No man is more agreeably presented 
than the aged Lord Lyndhurst, who at the time of the 
war wrote to him as a fellow countryman, remember- 
ing his birth on American soil; but this characterization 
is not made in any one passage. Mrs. Norton, too, and 
Lady William Russell are similarly a part of the pleasure 
which the letters give, as a picture of humane and hos- 
pitable English life, but they are mingled with the vari- 
ous scenes. Thackeray appears as "a colossal infant — 
smooth, white, shiny ringlety hair (flaxen, alas, with 
advancing years), a roundish face, with a little dab of 
a nose upon which it is a perpetual wonder how he keeps 
his spectacles, a sweet, but rather piping voice, with some- 
thing of a childish treble about it, and a very tall, slightly 
stooping figure," and without any distinction in his talk 
more than in his white choker. Macaulay is a sick 
man, whenever seen, with the cough which foreboded 
the end, a blank face, and "as it were badly lighted," 
nothing luminous in his eyes nor impressive in his brows, 
a spacious forehead "scooped entirely away in the region 
where benevolence ought to be, while beyond rise reve- 
rence, firmness, and self-esteem like Alps on Alps," while 
the eyes beneath are almost closed with swollen lids. 
Motley, who did not wish to talk, did not find him too 
much an autocrat of the conversation. Brougham, with 
snow-white and shiny hair, a knobby and bumpy head, 
furrowed with age, and a vast mouth, is principally re- 
membered by this observer for his incredible nose, which 



MOTLEY'S CORRESPONDENCE 231 

he wagged like an elephant's proboscis. These, how- 
ever, are all familiar features, and even "Dizzy," as Mrs. 
Norton describes him, "with a black velvet coat lined 
with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running 
down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace 
ruffles falling down to the tips of his fingers, white gloves 
with several brilliant rings outside them, and long black 
ringlets rippling down his shoulders," would not be 
strange except for the impossibility that the eye labors 
under in endeavoring to retain his youthful figure as a 
thing to be believed in. Of more interest is the sketch of 
Maximilian just before his departure to Mexico: "About 
thirty, with an adventurous disposition, some imagina- 
tion, a turn for poetry," an author "not without talent," 
who "relieves his prose jog-trot by breaking into a canter 
of poetry; an adorer of bullfights, who half regrets the 
Inquisition, and considers the Duke of Alva everything 
noble and chivalrous, and the most-abused of men." The 
Comte de Paris is better treated — "a model of what a 
young prince ought to be in manner, in character, in con- 
versation, in accomplishments. To be sure, he bribed me 
by his unaffected, sincere, and enthusiastic interest in my 
country; a more loyal and ardent American does not 
exist than this King's son." Other royal personages are to 
be seen on the page, always through republican eyes, and 
usually not to their advantage, except in the case of the 
frank and straightforward King of Holland and his re- 
fined and womanly Queen, always the unassuming friend 
of the best within her horizon. 

To his countrymen, however, the most welcome part of 
these volumes is not what they tell of the great ones of 
the earth, or of the social grace and hospitableness of 
England in its highest circles; but rather the fullness and 



232 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

clearness with which they reveal the unspoiled American 
heart which, through long residence in foreign lands and 
in the midst of aristocratic fascinations, Motley kept 
beating in his breast. No word can now be breathed 
against his patriotism or his entire adhesion to and belief 
in the democracy of his own country. His sketch of Aus- 
trian society, in which birth alone gives station, might be 
expected to contain some comment from one whose chief 
claim to attention was not diplomacy but literature. He 
could not be flattered, he says, to be received as a dip- 
lomatist when he could not be as a man. In his reflections 
upon English aristocracy he is not less loyal to the tra- 
ditions in which he was bred. He acknowledged himself 
to be a spectator in London, and had no desire to be "one 
of themselves." After stating the committal of America 
absolutely to the future of democracy, he goes on to say: 
"For me, I like democracy. I don't say it is pretty or 
genteel or jolly. But it has a reason for existing, and is 
a fact in America, and is founded in the immutable prin- 
ciple of reason and justice. Aristocracy certainly presents 
more brilliant social phenomena, more luxurious social 
enjoyments. Such a system is very cheerful for a few 
thousand select specimens out of a few hundred millions 
of the human race. It has been my lot and yours to see 
how much splendor, how much intellectual and physical 
refinement, how much enjoyment of the highest character 
has been created by the English aristocracy; but what a 
price is paid for it. Think of a human being working all 
day long, from six in the morning to seven at night, for 
fifteen or twenty kreutzers a day in Moravia or Bohemia, 
Ireland or Yorkshire, for forty or fifty years, to die in 
the workhouse at last! This is the lot of the great major- 
ity all over Europe; and yet they are of the same flesh and 



MOTLEY'S CORRESPONDENCE 233 

blood, the natural equals in every way of the Howards 
and Stanleys, Esterhazys and Liechtensteins." 

And again he says: 

"I don't think there is any danger of my losing my 
American feelings and my republican tastes, and I trust 
I can look on these scenes of exquisite and intelligent lux- 
ury objectively, as the Germans say, without confounding 
the characters of spectator and actor. . . . Much as I 
can appreciate and enjoy esthetically, sentimentally, and 
sensuously the infinite charm, refinement, and grace of 
English life, especially country life, yet I feel too keenly 
what a fearful price is paid by the English people in order 
that this splendid aristocracy with their parks and castles, 
and shootings and fishings and fox-huntings, their stately 
and unlimited hospitality, their lettered ease and learned 
leisure, may grow fat, ever to be in danger of finding my 
judgment corrupted by it. At the same time it is as well 
not to indulge too long and too copiously in the Circean 
draughts of English hospitality." 

Doubtless he was fortified in his patriotism by the in- 
tense passion aroused by the Civil War. In all he has to 
say of that conflict (and he has very much to say) there 
is the touch of a burning enthusiasm, of an overflowing 
interest, of personal anxiety and hope, of a home-felt 
share in the defeats and triumphs of the country's cause. 
He had the misfortune to differ from his father upon these 
topics, and he did not permit himself to speak of them 
to him; but in his letters to other members of the family 
he gave full expression to his feelings. He perceived with 
great definiteness the lines of the conflict, and especially 
the contest of moral forces and the issues of civilization 
involved in them. In devoting his life to the story of 
liberty in the Netherlands he had gone to school at the 



234 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

fountain; and he was so grounded in the love of the ideas 
the national cause stood for, as well as in the affection for 
his own country which life abroad in his case could only 
intensify, that he was bound, as by a natural law, to 
throw himself heart and soul into the Northern cause. 
He was able in consequence to state the question so clearly 
and forcibly in England as to do great service there, be- 
fore he returned to this country to be near the scene of 
affairs; and after his appointment to Vienna he kept in 
close connection with that body of Englishmen who, with 
Bright and Mill at their head, befriended our interests. 
The episode of his return home in 1861 is one of the 
capital chapters in the volumes. He represents the scene, 
the feelings, the confusion of the time, as a part thereof; 
and whether at Boston or Washington, his pulse tells the 
beat of the hour. The optimism of the nation at its first 
awakening is reproduced in him with almost amusing com- 
pleteness; and throughout the war the readiness with 
which he recoiled from the depression of defeat, and the 
vigor of his faith in our triumph, are attractive traits of 
his character. The anecdote of his finding himself in so 
oppressive a solitude when he received the news of the 
fall of Vicksburg is pathetic; he "screeched it through 
the keyhole" to his daughter; but "you," he says, address- 
ing Dr. Holmes, "who were among people grim and self- 
contained usually — who, I trust, were jailing on each 
other's necks in the public streets, and shouting with 
tears in their eyes and triumph in their hearts — can pic- 
ture my isolation." This is the contemporary life of 
those years still warm on the page; and many of these 
pages are dedicated to the joys and sorrows, public and 
private, of the time, in a way to deepen regret in our 
minds at the memory of the unmerited trials which so 



MOTLEY'S CORRESPONDENCE 235 

true an American heart suffered at the hands of our na- 
tional Government. 

His estimate of the men of the war is also a close ren- 
dering of contemporary feeling, especially with regard to 
the military hope of the hour, Scott or McClellan or 
Grant. The most interesting of these, however, is the 
impression he obtained of Lincoln, whom he saw only for 
a short hour at the opening of the fight. He was struck 
at once by the substantial characteristics of the Presi- 
dent, and, in his case, this was notable; there is nowhere 
any wonder expressed that a "backwoodsman" had come 
to so responsible a place, but only gratitude that an honest 
and true man was at the helm. He writes of him as 
early as June, 1862, with noticeable accuracy: "I think 
Mr. Lincoln embodies singularly well the healthy Ameri- 
can mind. He revolts at extreme measures, and moves in 
a steady way to the necessary end. He reads the signs of 
the times, and will never go faster than the people at his 
back. So his slowness seems sometimes like hesitation; 
but I have not a doubt that when the people wills it, he 
will declare that will." And after the assassination, recur- 
ring to his first impression of Lincoln, he writes: "He 
seemed to have a window in his breast. There was some- 
thing almost childlike in his absence of guile and affecta- 
tion of any kind. Of course, on the few occasions when I 
had the privilege of conversing with him, it was impossible 
for me to pretend to form an estimate as to his intellectual 
power, but I was struck with his simple wisdom, his 
straightforward, unsophisticated common sense. What 
our republic, what the whole world, has to be grateful for, 
is that God has endowed our chief magistrate, at such 
a momentous period of history, with so lofty a moral 
nature and with so loving and forgiving a disposition." 



236 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Perhaps in all these few lines of encomium which from 
time to time he writes upon the leading figures of the war, 
we may discern the hero-loving imagination working be- 
fore the facts were accomplished; but it was Motley's 
good fortune to have nourished his mind with contempla- 
tion of such men in the great struggle of the Netherlands, 
and he was thus in a position more readily to appreciate 
them. 

It remains to say a word about Motley's friendship 
with Bismarck, which is a leading topic in the volumes. 
They were college friends, or even schoolboys, together, 
and the tie which bound them was this early one cher- 
ished through years by both of them. They recognized 
the vast difference in their political creeds, but they also 
agreed that the condition of affairs in Prussia and America 
differed as widely as their views, and their friendship for- 
tunately was so purely personal that opinion did not enter 
into it as any part of the cement. Bismarck's letters are 
almost boyish or old-boyish, in spirit, and are half rollick- 
ing. They show the Chancellor out of his gravity; but 
this is only to see him more near. The accounts which 
Motley furnishes of the household arrangements and pri- 
vate habits of the Bismarcks fill out the picture; and if 
there is something of the German country baron and of 
squirearchy in them, this is the homeliness of truth. Bis- 
marck appears in a more amiable and noble light; his sin- 
cerity is much dwelt upon, his force and grasp are rather 
indicated than shown, but the conversation died on the 
air that heard it. The most valuable passage is the fol- 
lowing: 

"He said he used when younger to think himself a 
clever fellow enough, but now he was convinced that no- 
body had any control over events — that nobody was 



MOTLEY'S CORRESPONDENCE 237 

really powerful or great; and it made him laugh when he 
heard himself complimented as wise, foreseeing, and ex- 
ercising great influence over the world. A man in the 
situation in which he had been placed was obliged, while 
outsiders, for example, were speculating whether to-mor- 
row it would be rain or sunshine, to decide promptly, It 
will rain or it will be fine; and to act accordingly with all 
the forces at his command. If he guessed right, all the 
world said, What sagacity — what prophetic power! If 
wrong, all the old women would have beaten him with 
broomsticks. If he had learned nothing else, he said he 
had learned modesty." 

It may be said generally — and it is pleasant to be able 
to say such a thing of a collection of private letters — that 
this correspondence presents every one whom it brings 
forward in a way to win regard for him and not to lessen 
it. The social reminiscences, bare as they often are, are 
pervaded by hospitable and kindly feelings, and the liter- 
ary and political portions are without any disagreeable 
traits, but, on the contrary, show Motley's friendliness 
and patriotism, and a readiness to take men at the best 
possible, which now honor his memory. It is, neverthe- 
less, his own reputation that will be increased and en- 
deared by these proofs of his devotion. His belief in his 
own people, his anxiety to serve them in places of honor- 
able ambition or in private station, and his humane and 
sanguine temperament in the great conflict of his genera- 
tion, his laboriousness in his studies, and his unaffected 
friendliness with many persons of intellect, refinement, 
and good-will, make us the more glad to know that he 
remains, after all his disappointments, to the last line of 
his pen unalienated from ourselves. 



BAYARD TAYLOR 

It is so much a literary fashion to divide a man's life 
into periods of development, although they may not in 
reality differ from Shakespeare's "Seven Ages," that one 
is often inclined to be impatient with such an exordium. 
In Bayard Taylor's growth, however, there seem to have 
been two lives, so marked was the change in his nature; 
and he has, in fact, left two reputations in consequence 
— one widespread and established, the other narrow in 
its range and of doubtful permanence. Out of the still 
farm life of the Quaker settlement in Chester County, 
where he was cradled into poetry in the midst of a simple 
and pure people and under the guardianship of a quiet 
and cheerful landscape, he came at a very early age into 
the excitement, the busy triviality, and incessant vicis- 
situde of our earlier journalism; and having made a suc- 
cessful stroke at the start by his first book of travels, 
he won his way with rapidity and comparative ease to 
the position of best American reporter of scenes and in- 
cidents. This was what he called his service of Mam- 
mon, and he said he hated it. But from the first there 
was a purely literary strain in his blood, a spring of poetic 
thought in his heart that would not be choked, and an 
effort of his will toward artistic expression of the best 
of his spirit. His early friends, the sponsors of his 
baptism before the muses, were not of the choicest. 
Rufus Wilmot Griswold was the editor to discover him; 
but for the youth to whom Griswold was a Maecenas, 

239 



24 o LITERARY MEMOIRS 

the auguries were certainly of doubtful complexion; and 
when he found his Augustus in the person of the natty 
Willis, the odds against his making a man of himself 
were to be counted off only by his innate virtue and 
the vigor of his mind. It is as good, at least, as one of 
his own novels to see from his youthful letters how much 
he prized the first literary society into which he was ad- 
mitted, the New York coterie of mutual admiration and 
secret envy, of which here and there in our literary annals 
some mention may still be found under the name of "the 
Literati," as they called themselves. Taylor was so far 
imposed on by it as to write of "that charmed circle of 
artist and author life, which is the only real life of this 
world," and he was in middle life before he described it 
as under-bred, half-refined, and superficially cultivated. 
Perhaps his travels, by removing him from the danger 
of constantly breathing this atmosphere, served him bet- 
ter than he knew. However that may have been, it is 
enough to beget a charitable spirit in one to remember 
that in his youth journalism was his taskmaster and 
Willis the high-priest of his cult. 

Taylor quickly enlarged his circle through the oppor- 
tunities of travel and the readiness and freshness of his 
instincts for fraternity. He made friends with everybody 
he met, and one might almost say with every creature, 
even to savage beasts. He enlarged his mind, too, and 
on returning from his visit to the East he was able to 
draw to himself an audience distinctly his own. Money 
flowed in from books, lectures, and successful invest- 
ments, and he built Cedarcroft and settled down in the 
expectation that fortune would continue to shower gifts 
upon him. He was soon to be ready, he thought, to 
be a poet; he had been making sure of his bread first, 



BAYARD TAYLOR 241 

and now he would make sure of his fame. But the 
war came, and when it was gone there was a new nation, 
and Taylor found he had outlived his early reputation 
and had lost his own audience. Trouble in one form or 
another was at hand. His manor-house on the paternal 
acres was a millstone round his neck; and finally, after a 
long struggle of incessant hard work at book-making, he 
went back to his hack-life on the newspaper from which 
he was relieved by his appointment as minister to the 
German court and his speedy death. In the latter part 
of his career he had translated "Faust" and written long 
poems, and it was for these works that he cared; for he 
had learned by experience the ephemeral nature of a 
traveler's reputation, and he desired most ardently to 
leave an enduring name. The mass of his writings is 
very large, but his heart was in his poetry only; 
the rest was what he called mere pot-boiling literature. 
In these last years, too, there was an expansion of his 
intellectual nature and a sharpening of his artistic per- 
ception, due in large measure to his study of Goethe, who 
overmastered his mind and determined the character of 
the latest products of his genius. It was from the 
Goethean point of view that he looked down almost con- 
temptuously on the earlier period of his literary activity, 
and looked forward and up to the future work of his 
hands, the true work, which was to prolong his memory 
among men. His death was thus, he would have thought, 
as truly premature as if he had died in youth. Hope 
was so strong in him that when past fifty the best of his 
life seemed still before him. 

The most prominent point in the popular conception 
of Bayard Taylor is that he was a man of great vitality; 
and, as is frequently the case, the people have seized on 



242 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

the main characteristic. The activity of his mind was 
enormous, and it may fairly be said that it was the over- 
flow of physical health in no small degree. But just as 
he would say that the public did not see that he could 
not be so good a traveler had he not been a poet, so the 
vital force that enabled him to grasp and master such 
masses of work would never have sustained him had he 
not been buoyed up also by an eagerness of the spirit. 
The trait his biography reveals on nearly every page, from 
the days of youthful ardor to those of untiring manhood, 
is aspiration of the most unflagging and incorruptible 
kind. Whether Taylor succeeded or not in realizing the 
fondest wish of his heart, to be known as one of his 
country's great poets, there is no doubt that he always 
was working upward to the plane of their life with a 
high, firm purpose that grew more strong and simple at 
each turn of his worldly fortune. It was because of 
this aspiration that the difference between his first and 
second period has so marked a character as to seem a 
difference between two lives ; he left his youthful environ- 
ment and all that it contained behind him, and rose out 
of "the Literati" into literature. 

It belongs to this strong aspiration, too, that he was 
so avaricious of praise, hoarded up his commendations 
from "the poets," and overvalued their meaning. He 
was all his days hungry for recognition; he welcomed it 
from any quarter, and repaid it profusely with his own 
good-will. It was not vanity that made him listen so 
keenly for applause; it was not self-conceit that was 
bred in him by the praise he got; and yet it is not a 
pleasant characteristic to meet with when one finds the 
hero so anxious for the roses. It made some people mis- 
understand and dislike Taylor in his lifetime, and there 



BAYARD TAYLOR 243 

is in it certainly some proof that he was without the 
assurance that goes with matured genius of high order. 
A discomfortable doubt of his position always haunted 
him, and this made him prize distinction of an outward 
kind, and practically look to his friends to mint his coin 
with their royal approval. The trait of the parvenu, 
too, is very disagreeably conspicuous in the attitude of 
his mind toward the great men whom he met, and par- 
ticularly in his pleasure at being favored by Bismarck 
and others whose worldly position attracted his respect- 
ful admiration. It is said that we all like titles, and 
perhaps he shared a national weakness; but it would 
seem rather that this regard for the aristocratic was an- 
other phase of his desire to be admitted to an inner cir- 
cle, as if he were in some way accredited by such an 
admission. 

To meet at once a second questionable trait, he was 
always self-absorbed, engaged mainly in his own affairs, 
with a word now and then for others and what they were 
doing and hoping, but nevertheless, kindly and cordial 
though he was, essentially preoccupied with his plans 
and deeds. He was too busy, in fact, to think about 
other matters than his own; he had no time. Of course 
he was not lacking in any liberality to his kindred and 
his friends; he gave what he had — his good-fortune, 
his hospitality, the favor of his name, the good-will of 
his heart — everything except his thoughts. For this 
reason his letters are concerned, more than is usual, with 
private and temporary details — his new ventures in 
material or literary affairs, and especially with what he 
was going to do; for he was more attentive to the future 
than to the present. Thus one comes about again to 
what was the leading mark, the saving power of his life 



244 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

— his irrepressible aspiration, of which his deference 
to authority and his engrossing interest in the develop- 
ment of himself were, in part, results. It is not necessary 
to point out how fit such a nature was to imbibe the ideas 
of Goethe and incorporate them in his own life. 

Throughout the latter part of his career Bayard 
Taylor evidently felt much aggrieved by the fact that 
the people judged him by his achievements in the lower 
walk of literature. At first, when his mental horizon was 
still bounded by a foreign landscape, he was pleased 
to be known as the most successful traveler of his age, 
and, if he dipped into poetry, as he could not help 
doing, he wrote a Californian ballad. But after "the age 
of sensations and short poems," as he called it, was gone 
by, and especially after he had translated "Faust," he 
sent letters to the newspaper for pay only, and occupied 
himself with the ambition of composing, not epics, to be 
sure, but a "cosmic poem" — one or more, according to 
the length of his life, for there was never any question 
in his own mind that he was inexhaustible. The ex- 
perience he had acquired in outgrowing the bonds of his 
early education and breaking away from the formulas 
of Chester County life, and his observations of the creeds 
of alien races, with the knowledge thus impressed upon 
him as to the contingencies of religious dogma, had made 
a foundation in his mind for a poem of philosophic scope, 
and he wrote one or two of such a character. They may 
have been "cosmic," but they were not popular, and since 
his death they have not grown in esteem. Some of his 
Arab lyrics will outlive "Prince Deucalion." 

Without undertaking to decide whether Taylor's com- 
plaint that the people looked on him as a traveler pri- 
marily and as a poet only secondarily, was just or not, 



BAYARD TAYLOR 245 

one may make one or two observations on his poetic 
method. He wrote with facility, and his composition 
was unusually rapid, but the subject, he frequently de- 
clares, was for years in his mind slowly taking shape 
and was at last suddenly developed. He speaks of poems 
as of other literary work — a newspaper article or a 
review for example — as if they could be made to order: 
so many last week, so many to be ready by such a day 
next month; and similarly of long poems: he will be 
through at such a date, and there will be so many lines — 
and this he knows before the draft is completed. These 
trifles are straws, but they show a good deal; and from 
them and other hints the impression is left on the mind 
that Taylor chose his subject first and wrote about it 
afterward, and the availability of any particular sub- 
ject from the supply he had always in his mind, was 
determined by various considerations other than that 
need for expression which is the only true inspiration. 
The great poets are more likely to name their verses 
after they are composed, and to have the substance of 
thought or passion before they cast about for a heading. 
Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" is only the "Paradise 
Regained" of a new age — the lyric for the epic, the 
Greek for the Jewish, the human for the Puritanic; but 
the idea, the same Messianic one that "springs eternal in 
the human breast." Bayard Taylor, on the other hand, 
apparently thought of a "cosmic poem" first and of what 
he should say in it afterward. It is also significant that 
in his later poems he was so much given to symbolism. 
To a genius of the loftiest order, like Goethe, allegory 
is merely a mode of expression; the thought is thus 
conveyed by a symbol, but the thought is far more than 
the symbol, and is no more contained in it than an ele- 



246 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

mental force is contained in a single phenomenon. To 
minds of a lower rank, like Rossetti's, symbolization itself 
is a mode of thinking rather than of expression; the 
symbol gives rise to the thought instead of the thought 
to the symbol. The instrument of poetry is, of course, 
concrete images in all cases, though not necessarily 
visual ones; but to poets in whom intellectual power is 
preeminent, images are a language, while to poets of 
lower rank the images themselves are the poetry. Many 
a time in literature we have had rhymesters who strung 
similes and metaphors, and thought they were produc- 
ing poems: similarly, since Goethe's time, we have had 
thinkers, both mystic and scientific, who string symbols 
and allegories and believe they are composing philosophy 
in verse. 

It would be unjust to say that Taylor was merely one 
of these latter, but he helps us to understand them. 
The mode of poetic composition he chose in "Prince 
Deucalion" was of this kind; it requires the very highest 
intellectual genius to employ it successfully, and he 
failed. When he was appointed Minister to Germany 
he was felt to be the representative of our journalists 
rather than of our literary men, and the publication of 
"Prince Deucalion" shortly afterward confirmed the view. 
This last drama of his life is dwelt on because it marks 
his line of development, and was one of the mainstays 
of his hope of immortality in literature. He wrote much 
better poems when his mind was not filled with such 
large ambition. But whether his fame shall prove to 
be transitory, and to rest still on his muscles and pluck 
and vivacity as when he was thirty years old, the history 
of his later career is that of a very noble effort to achieve 
the highest, and together with it a constant and toilsome 



BAYARD TAYLOR 247 

fulfilment of the duties of his material life as a man 
with bread to earn. In outliving the era when reputa- 
tions were easily won, he entered on a harder career, and 
bore himself in it in a way to win respect from his suc- 
cessors as largely as he won affection from his con- 
temporaries. 



A SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLAR 

Richard Grant White put his hand to the plow 
in many fields of literature, and in all he showed the 
sturdiness that denotes yeoman stock. But, apart from 
his special taste for music, the most of his studies sprang 
from his love of Shakespeare. In the case of his theatri- 
cal and philological writings this is obvious, and in those 
which illustrate his attachment to England it is fair to 
ascribe no inconsiderable part to the fondness which, 
however invigorated and broadened by other traditions, 
was primarily due to the great dramatist of English his- 
tory and life. Essays upon words, stage-usages, and 
matters of music, observations upon our cousins' ways 
and customs and modes of speech, international satire, 
and squibs of all kinds and lengths made up a large part 
of his industrious literary life; but, for all that, Shake- 
speare was his profession, and the principal work of his 
hands was editorial. In some respects this choice of 
employment was felicitous, and fell in with natural intel- 
lectual aptitudes. He had a note-taking mind, and his 
memory was retentive of details to an extraordinary 
degree — a quality invaluable to an editor of texts; and 
in addition to this, his clear-headedness, his shrewd so- 
briety, his content with a plain and honest-seeming mean- 
ing, and especially his contempt for the palaver of re- 
fining analysts of the German stripe, stood him in such 
good stead that he holds an honorable place among the 
students who have made the critical study of Shake- 

249 1 



250 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

speare part and parcel of the pride of American scholar- 
ship. 

The substance of his attainments is to be found, of 
course, in the various essays, prefatory either to the gen- 
eral work or to the individual plays and poems, which 
conduce so much to the value of his version of Shake- 
speare in the way of expansion, criticism, and informa- 
tion; and in these his views are set forth with most 
modesty, succinctness, and moderation, and his knowl- 
edge is deployed with most swiftness and effect. They 
form, however, only a small portion of his contributions 
to Shakespeare literature; very much of his labor in his 
chosen subject was off-hand work, and must be sought 
in the magazines to which he devoted his less serious 
moments. Such articles — and their number is legion — 
usually present some single phase of a Shakespeare 
theme; and no matter how dry and formal the topic in 
itself, he makes it entertaining. For it is a distinction 
of Mr. White's that he always interests; he has the secret 
of pleasing. His style is wonderfully firm and close- 
knit; his facts are cold as an iceberg and hard as a flint; 
and he strews the mental way of his readers with the 
native nuggets of Yankee sense. His individuality 
counts for more than all. He was himself a character, 
in the special meaning of the word; one of those im- 
penetrable pieces of nature's workmanship which are 
malleable by no external influence of culture, society, 
or circumstance. Such persons cannot open their lips 
without some self-exhibition; whether their solitude is 
of the village or the study, they always speak from within, 
and echo no man. Mr. White, who was as tenacious 
of his peculiarities as an Englishman, stamped them 
upon his writings; and it is due to this that when one 



A SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLAR 251 

reads his words it is, to an unusual degree, as if one 
heard him speaking. When a man of this sort has the 
gift of literary expression, he will be a readable author, 
whatever deficiencies he may have; and this Mr. White 
was. Indeed, when one glances over the mass of his 
minor writing, though it belongs undoubtedly to the 
literature that springs up and withers in a day, one can- 
not help wondering at the brightness of its short-lived 
verdancy. There could hardly seem to be a more thank- 
less task than to make a new paraphrase of Shake- 
speare's plays. It is true that poets, great and small, 
have tried to rewrite those dramas, not seeing how deep 
their words are graved in the living rock of English 
speech ; but to tell their story over in prose — no one 
would do that except for children. Yet in the half 
dozen cases in which Mr. White tried his hand at this 
mode of transcription, he made, if not novelettes, cer- 
tainly most delightful sketches, which, though every 
incident and characteristic of them was familiar to us 
from our childhood, have the unmistakable and un- 
rubbed newness that belongs to the magazine-mint. 
These renovations have a use, too, more than to pass an 
hour of easy reading: they are needed to remind us, 
who think mostly of the action and thought of Shake- 
speare's dramas, how much the story counts in the work, 
and this is best shown by relieving it from its subordi- 
nation to character and treating it in the novelist's way. 
The "Tale of the Forest of Arden," for example, as it is 
retold, might serve as a lesson in romantic fiction, by 
revealing how poetry is of the essence of it all, not a 
matter of expression, but of structure. The happiness 
of Mr. White's renderings of Shakespeare in prose, how- 
ever, is cited only as a striking instance of his power 



252 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

over the least promising material. He would strike a 
shower of wheat out of thrice-threshed straw; or so it 
seems. 

Mr. White selected and revised some of these loose 
articles. One perceives that Mr. White possessed a hard- 
and-fast intellect of the sort about which there is, in 
the favorite phrase, "no nonsense." As a Shakespearean, 
he was himself, in the bent of his mind, one of the 
class of American readers which he describes — "so 
large and so diffused through society that it cannot be 
rightly called a class, who do not know that there are 
German critics, who have little acquaintance with any 
criticism, to whom Schlegel is unrevealed and Coleridge 
is but a name, and who yet read and understand and 
love and delight in Shakespeare, and who would quietly 
smile at the notion that 'at last' we understand Shake- 
speare because some learned people have said very pro- 
found sayings about his revelations of the 'inner life.' " 
His own appreciation of Shakespeare, though so much 
more informed, was essentially the same which belongs 
to the people of home-keeping wits, who read their au- 
thor in that unenlightened fashion in which the audiences 
of the Globe listened when the text still knew no re- 
cension except that of the pirates. His aim as an editor 
was to restore, so far as was possible, the conditions of 
the past; to place the reader in the position of the 
Elizabethan theater-goer, and leave him to get the orig- 
inal entertainment which Shakespeare had in mind when' 
he wrote. Shakespeare meant to amuse, and in our times 
it was the part of a loyal adherent of the master to help 
him in his old purpose. To such a view metaphysics, 
however acute, was out of place in Shakespeare's de- 
mesne; was a perversion of poetry, like the science which 



A SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLAR 253 

botanizes upon a mother's grave. No words were too 
sharp, no denunciations too heavy, in Mr. White's 
opinion, for the flagellation of that school which is no 
longer confined to German lecture-rooms, but now in all 
quarters of criticism makes of Shakespeare a problem 
instead of a poem. 

Perhaps in this onslaught Mr. White might have 
gained by discriminating. The fact is that the dramas 
do afford a field for such philosophizing, whether rightly 
or wrongly. It may have been unknown to Shakespeare, 
but he did write a text-book of human life. By the 
force of his genius he represented mankind, on its social 
and spiritual side, with the reality of nature. It is the 
excellence of his creative art that his characters live, and 
show their souls not wholly but by glimpses, as common 
mortals do; and thus Hamlet, for example, presents to 
us the puzzle that any highly organized man affords to a 
thoughtful observer, and allows of countless theories in 
regard to his personality and motives. All life is to the 
thinker fair game for his meditation, and in it the 
universal spiritual laws are to be discerned, or guessed 
at, or speculated about. It would be foolish to object 
to any amount of philosophizing on the real phenomena 
of character; and if Shakespeare has given us the micro- 
cosmos of man, if the reality of his imagination is not 
less truthful than that of actual experience, why should 
not Germans or Englishmen use it, the more readily be- 
cause it is a common possession, and not, like ordinary 
instances, known only to the few who happen to be 
spectators? Mr. White was wrong, if he found fault 
with the Shakespeare philosophers, or denied their posi- 
tions, simply because they occupied themselves with 
material not originally written for such an investigation; 



2 5 4 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

and if he was right at all, it was only in maintaining that 
Shakespeare knew nothing of this value of his work, 
and cared nothing for it. Of course there has been 
much error and feebleness and trash written by the mem- 
bers of this critical school, as is done by incompetence 
in all departments ; but there has been also some wisdom, 
and it would be gratuitous, if not dangerous, to affirm 
Shakespeare's ignorance of the worth of his work for 
instruction. One cannot safely set limits to the knowl- 
edge that any great author has of the various meanings 
which his lines may convey, even if he does not, like 
Dante, definitely declare that he has expressed a mani- 
fold meaning in the same identical words. Wisdom as 
well as wit often lodges in the ears that hear it as much 
as on the lips that speak it, and its application to special 
circumstances frequently discovers hidden truth in the 
worn words. How many meanings, for example, have 
Virgil's lines disclosed to those who for centuries have 
consulted the Sortes VirgilianoB! It would be as foolish 
to credit Virgil with these as with the famous Messianic 
prophecy in his eclogue. The case illustrates how inno- 
cent Shakespeare was of a good part of the exegesis forced 
upon him by his editors. At the same time it is not 
likely that they have so exceeded the great master in 
wisdom that he would be surprised to find that they 
make of him an understanding author as well as a success- 
ful playwright. 

The weight of Mr. White's objurgation, however, falls 
less upon those who comment upon the text and the gen- 
eral conception of the plays than upon those who reason 
therefrom to the dramatist's life and development. He 
himself allows the existence of periods of literary art in 
his author, but in "spiritual stages" he is almost a total 



A SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLAR 255 

disbeliever. But here, too, one must discriminate, and 
in much the same way as before. A man grows, but his 
growth is largely unconscious. The craze to find an 
"evolution" in all things could not pass by the prime 
phenomena of genius; and so Shakespeare has been fur- 
nished with one. The mistake is in giving too firm lines 
to the progress of his mind and art. Neither the meta- 
physical nor the literary yard-stick can be applied to 
the "myriad-minded" one with any but a ludicrous result; 
and the scholar who would build up Shakespeare's life 
in the easy-going fashion of distinct and successive 
periods is over-confident. The unfolding of his special 
gift of expression, the apprenticeship and the mastery 
of art, may be distinguished, from the first smooth-sliding 
lines to the volcanic fusion of intractable speech in the 
language of "Cymbeline." So may a similar thing be ob- 
served in Browning, or Carlyle, or Tennyson — the mere 
hand-cunning. And in Shakespeare's temper of mind a 
change may be observed, plainly enough, in the succes- 
sive plays, not taken individually, but in their totality. 
It is the same, essentially, which the great poets exhibit 
in passing from youth to age; so pathetic in Virgil, so 
deadly earnest in Dante, so exalted in Milton, so wise in 
Shakespeare. But to go further than this, and recon- 
struct the inner life of these men, and especially of him 
whose gift of taciturnity outrivaled nature's secrecy, is 
another matter; and for those who do this, and would 
seem to know Shakespeare better than he knew himself, 
any one with knowledge of the inner life must have the 
kind of pity that is akin to contempt. Mr. White had 
for them unlimited scorn, and poured it forth unceasingly 
and unsparingly. Those men who assume to know the 
unsearchable soul of genius, and those who seek to dress 



256 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

the writer of pleasant comedies and tragical histories 
as an avant-courier of Hegelianism, were foes to be put 
to flight with all his critical weapons if he could compass 
it. He was a partisan in the conflict, but even when 
going to great lengths he did good work. To free Shake- 
speare from his commentators is more of a gain than a 
loss, for, generally speaking, they are of the sort that 
darkens counsel. It is possible to look upon their ex- 
planations of the doctrines of life as unfolded in Shake- 
speare's plays, and even upon their efforts to reduce his 
own genius to the familiarity of Rousseau-like autobiog- 
raphy, with a most tolerant spirit; but blessed is he who 
finds Shakespeare, though he loses them! 

But did Mr. White find Shakespeare? Did he suc- 
ceed any better than the victims of his own censure in 
forming an ideal Shakespeare out of the materials at 
hand on the "no nonsense" theory? What was his concep- 
tion of the man? He lost no opportunity of insist- 
ing that the genius we idolize was a popular London 
playwright, whose aim was immediately to please the 
spectators and thereby get money. If he wrote a good 
acting play that would draw an audience and increase 
the stock dividends of the managers, he had achieved 
his whole purpose. In this was included his entire notion 
of the use of the divine art and of his own life. This is 
the substance of Mr. White's teaching, reiterated almost 
to weariness. The theory falls in with the common idea 
that Shakespeare was a kind of Nature's foundling, to 
whom benevolent fairies had given the great gifts of 
wisdom, beauty, and fortune as carelessly as if they 
were shining pebbles, just as fairies used to do in the 
old story-books. A few surface facts, principal among 
them the omission to edit and publish his complete works, 



A SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLAR 257; 

give support to the presumed indifference to fame or 
ignorance of the transcendent worth of his creations on 
Shakespeare's part, which is involved in the position. 
There are ready explanations of the facts referred to, 
such as the nature of theatrical property in those days,, 
and the desirability of not publishing the plays in order 
to monopolize their acting by his own company. Giving 
due weight to all that Mr. White urges, it seems to us 
that it has been as dangerous for him to stop at the sur- 
face of Shakespeare's life as it was for the anatomists to 
probe the center. In attending to his characterization 
of the man as a money-getter, one is reminded of the 
ancient science that discovered in humanity a threefold 
soul, and one thinks that Mr. White may have found 
one of these in Shakespeare's case, and has forgotten to 
look for the other two. In fact, it must be confessed 
that the editor has sometimes shown a weakness of 
poetic apprehension — that his Shakespeare is rather an 
observer of life than a poet. This comes out strikingly 
in his statement, for example, that Shakespeare most 
withdraws the veil from his own personality in "Troilus 
and Cressida," and in the character of Ulysses give ex- 
pression to his own views of life. This drama is indeed 
packed with noble phrases and fine wisdom, but if one 
were to seek for Shakespeare in it, it would better be in 
the impatience, the undisguised contempt, that the au- 
thor shows for these wars about the Grecian jade; nor is 
there more reason to ascribe any special earnestness or 
directness to the words of the dialogue than in the case 
of any other of the dramas that allow frequent oppor- 
tunity for the utterance of universal truths in respect 
to man's nature or life. Mr. White's use of the play is 
merely to emphasize his notion that Shakespeare was a 



258 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

man of the world exclusively, or at least primarily. This 
is a cardinal trait of the editor's Shakespeareanism. 
There is little need for argument. The many phrases 
of the sonnets which prophesy immortality for the verse 
are not to be set aside as merely customary at the 
time, or as applicable only to the more pretentious work 
(as Mr. White thinks) of the poet as distinct from the 
dramatist; they have the ring of sincerity too clear for 
that, the stamp of the mens conscia virtutis which con- 
verts a boast into the just superscription of Caesar. But 
apart from all these minor matters of evidence, the 
world will never believe that the man who knew human 
life more widely and profoundly than any other mere 
mortal that ever wrote was ignorant only of himself; 
or that, with such acquaintance with the noble and ideal 
ends of life, he contented himself with that one of 
avarice or of getting on in the world which is held to 
be among the meanest and most paltry, and which is 
usually debasing to the higher faculties. Had he been 
so furnished with insight, imagination, and ideality as 
he was, so complete in earthly wisdom and so appre- 
hensive of the excellence of human virtue, and had he, 
notwithstanding, declined to the level of those who care 
for their gifts and works only as means of merchandise, 
he would have been a monstrosity so strange that nature 
could scarce contain his deformities. This is instinc- 
tively felt by those whose thoughts keep proportion. In 
this matter Mr. White exhibited most plainly the limita- 
tion of his mind. The truth which gives any color 
to his characterization of Shakespeare may easily be 
granted, as that he was always mindful of his audience's 
taste, of stage traditions, of the actual conditions under 
which he practised his art, and that he made money 



A SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLAR 259 

by his work and was glad to have it, and that he valued 
social rank and position. The error lies in affirming 
that this is the whole story; in ignoring the poetic nature, 
the most self-conscious of all the varieties of tempera- 
ment; and in passing by all that indicates Shakespeare's 
regard for his art, even in the chance ways possible, such 
as his repeated criticism on the abuses of the stage and 
his great reform in the disposition made of the Fool. 
In these last it was not the theatrical manager, but the 
outraged poet, who spoke; his impatient contempt for 
the laughter of the pit and the rant of the stage, though 
he yielded to them as much as was needful, is the ob- 
verse of his love for his art and the value he set upon 
it. But these hints in regard to the qualities involved 
in the mere existence of such creative genius, and ex- 
pressly shown in random flashes of his work, are almost 
superfluous. Because Shakespeare submitted in his art 
and worldly life to the conditions imposed on him by 
fortune, and made that submission the most marvelous 
triumph of all literature, is not a reason for affirming 
that he gave his assent to these conditions ; and unless he 
did so with all his soul, the theory that he cared for 
nothing except to get rich by catering to the apprentices 
must fall to the ground. We must stop this side of 
Mr. White's furthest mark, therefore, and admit only 
that Shakespeare had the wisdom, as a literary work- 
man, to take the times as he found them and reduce them 
to the purposes of great art; and that, Heaven be thanked, 
he was paid for his laborious industry, and left money 
to pay his debts and provide for his children. 

To parody the literary proverb, one might say that 
the defects of Mr. White's Shakespeareanism produced 
its qualities. In a field so large and various., it may be a 



260 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

working advantage to have limitations of outlook and 
effort, and to take short views. The editor who has once 
satisfied himself, as did Mr. White, that to build spiritual 
biography was foolishness and to philosophize about 
the inner life was futile has greatly simplified his task; 
and if to this he adds the positive idea that Shake- 
speare's vision was bounded by the circuit of the London 
theater, he may well rest contented with the aim of 
merely restoring the past conditions, and so providing 
his readers with notes that they can mingle with the 
crowd at the Globe as with contemporaries. Within 
these self-imposed bounds the gifts of Mr. White were 
put to admirable use. In the mere matter of the vo- 
cabulary, in elucidating or restoring meanings to words, 
he was a well-informed and trustworthy guide; and how 
large a portion of his study was philological does not 
need to be pointed out. Perhaps a more important, be- 
cause rarer, service was his reconstruction of the orig- 
inal acting, the mise-en-scene, in which his knowledge of 
the stage was an efficient aid to his scholarship and in- 
sight. He laments the break in the theatrical tradition 
occasioned by the closing of the theaters under the Com- 
monwealth, because it probably deprived us of Shake- 
speare's own conception of how the characters should be 
represented; but his essays upon the acting of Rosalind 
and of Iago, for example, do more to set the Elizabethan 
interpretation of the plays before us than anything else 
with which we are acquainted. In fact, Mr. White's fre- 
quent criticism on modern impersonations of Shake- 
speare's characters, by showing how far removed they 
are from the author's intention, makes a part of his most 
instructive writings. 

Besides the linguistic and the theatrical strands in 



A SHAKESPEAREAN SCHOLAR 261 

the more valuable portion of his work, something is to 
be said for the critical element in the department of 
characterization. It was here that the editor was strong- 
est. The conception of Iago which he develops is as 
finely reasoned an essay as can be found in the field, 
and his restoration of Jaques from a melodramatic fool 
into his original sour cynicism is a piece of retributive 
justice too long delayed. One has a special gratitude 
for his penetration into the noble nature of Cassio, who 
has met with little understanding hitherto, and for the 
clear and sympathetic discovery of it to his readers. It 
is when Mr. White applies himself to these subjects that 
he shows the most valuable individual qualities, and 
merits honor. They belong, however, to the detailed 
rather than the general criticism of Shakespeare. In 
scholarship he was, perhaps, lacking in breadth, and in 
more than one instance, as in his discussion of the text 
of the two quartos of "Hamlet," he argues beside the 
point in dispute. Notwithstanding these things, the real 
value of Mr. White's Shakespeareanism is not impaired. 
The literary form and charm of his style, the hard- 
headedness of his mind, the practical sense he always 
displays, make his work, within the limitations which 
he himself assigned it, of great positive utility; and the 
sturdiness with which he stood for common sense, in 
opposition to the eulogistic gush with which Shakespeare, 
in common with all the greatest poets, is overwhelmed, 
is something to be very grateful for. He had his pet 
notions, as who has not? and he was a hard hitter — 
"Let the galled jade wince!" But he spent his life with 
his favorite author, and made of him his liberal educa- 
cation ; would that the universities afforded so good a one ! 
His labor was one of love, and it has the value and respect 



262 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

of the best work a man can do, being deficient only 
where Nature herself had denied faculty, in this case on 
the poetic side. He has gone over to the shelves of the 
"great majority" of acknowledged commentators, be- 
neath the Stratford bust, and with him go the plaudits 
of true lovers of Shakespeare for such lifelong and honest 
service to the god of our literary idolatry. 

It is but just to add a few words of acknowledgment 
for the vigor and brightness shown by Mr. White in his 
work in other fields. His versatility, information, and 
industry were very great. He was essentially a littera- 
teur rather than an author. The keen observant power 
of his view of English life and manners was really marvel- 
ous, when one considers his comparatively short resi- 
dence — or more properly speaking, vacation — in the 
mother country; and his knowledge of England, as shown 
in other volumes than those of travel, appears as inti- 
mate as a native's He possessed, beside this ready 
apprehension of facts and insight into human nature, 
some of the qualities of the transplanted stock from which 
he sprang, and showed them in the patience and frugal 
independence of a self-respecting life, which may well 
serve as a lesson in simplicity and dignity to the rapidly 
increasing class of writers who make minor literature 
their profession. The lack of tolerance which he some- 
times exhibited was not that of an unamiable but of a 
strong nature; and the insistence on some opinions which 
he seems to have regarded as his private property was 
the common foible of students. On the other hand, 
genuine heartiness and an inbred courtesy may be easily 
discerned beneath his literary exterior. 



COLONIAL BOOKS 

The first three volumes of Stedman's "Library of 
American Literature" cover the colonial and revolutionary 
times down to the adoption of the Constitution. It may 
seem surprising that three large quarto volumes were 
required to hold what is worth preservation in a period 
usually regarded as barren, in a literary sense; but 
the editors interpreted the term "literature" in a liberal 
way, and meant to present in this collection a view of 
the intellectual life in the colonies, and later in the States 
of the Union, without too strict a regard to that quality 
of form and style which makes literature classic. The 
colonial writings are for the most part interesting on 
historical grounds: they consist of chronicles, diaries of 
adventure, and all kinds of sermonizing; and undoubt- 
edly, as a whole, they are very tedious, more fit for the 
leisure of our state historical societies in their proceed- 
ings than for general reading. The impression that there 
is so little of real value in the colonial literature that it 
is not worth while to search for it is widespread; and 
in a certain sense this is true. In those days literature 
was not practiced as a fine art in this country. The 
books that were written, however, came very near to the 
real life of the people, reflected their thoughts and their 
doings with truthfulness, if not with beauty, and consti- 
tute the record of the settlement. Literature was at all 
events a practical art. There was as much life in ser- 
mons then as there is in newspapers now; and in the 

263 



264 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

tragedies of the wilderness, in shipwreck, Indian battle, 
and pirate-hunting, in Quakerism and witchcraft, there 
was that union of romance and reality which gives to 
history the liveliness of fiction. One who is unacquainted 
with the stores of our historical societies would turn these 
pages with surprise at their riches. The first volume 
is the American Hakluyt. Here is a chapter out of 
that voyaging which was opening the whole western 
world, and to us the most interesting of all because it 
contains the adventures of the American coast; it is 
read, too, as it came from the lips of the men who were 
themselves chief actors in the scene, direct in speech 
as they were sturdy in deed. There is no art in the 
saying of their words, but the pulse of the action is still 
to be felt in their narratives; the story is yet warm with 
memory of joys and sorrows, the ipsissima verba of cast- 
aways rescued against hope. One who would obtain 
a vivid impression of what planting the wilderness was 
could not do better than read these pages, in which ad- 
mirable selection has brought together the best of these 
living narratives; and as he continues, he will find the 
entire life of the colonies, their hopes, beliefs, and cus- 
toms, their perils and their deliverances, opening under 
his view. The collection in the first three volumes is an 
illustration, better than any history, of the first hundred 
and fifty years of English life on this continent. 

A considerable part of the material is necessarily 
familiar, inasmuch as the more important events in his- 
tory and the more striking incidents in personal adven- 
ture are natural subjects for editorial selection; but these 
are told from the original sources. It is unavoidable, 
too, that the colonies of Virginia and of New England, 
especially the latter, should occupy a disproportionate 



COLONIAL BOOKS 265 

place, because their inhabitants left more written records 
of themselves and came more into the ken of travelers. 
Intellectual life was more vigorous among the Puritans 
of the Bay than elsewhere, and the whole social system 
felt its stimulus. From the other parts of the country 
comes little else than descriptions of places, anecdotes 
of warfare, and a few characterizations of men, together 
with the famous shipwreck of Sir Thomas Gates off the 
Bermudas, and the dolorous narrative of Colonel Nor- 
wood's voyage and sufferings in Virginia, which is as 
fine a story of adventure as the chronicles contain, and 
is told in a manner to delight Kingsley or Thackeray. 
One gets also, a glimpse of the Southern pirates, but 
no more. Similarly, the collection affords only a slight 
account of New York, a bird's-eye view of the trading 
village, and a glance at its city politics, disturbed even 
at that early day. It is New England that furnishes 
the bulk of the matter which has come down to us, from 
the internal troubles of the Leyden church, the landing 
at Plymouth, the coming of Endicott, Morton of Merry- 
mount, the hiding of the king's judges, down through 
Quakerism and witchcraft, French and Indian wars, to 
the defiance of Adams and Otis. This was a most inter- 
esting period, with changes and incidents in plenty, 
with solid characters for counsel and action, and with 
one of the most remarkable communities of the world 
to mold and develop. The editor's skill in so choosing 
extracts from the mass of forgotten writings as to place 
before us the traits of the people is a very fortunate gift. 
It is especially matter for congratulation that he has 
taken from the ecclesiastical record so many character- 
izations of the leading Puritan ministers, such as Hooker, 
Shepard, Cotton, Eliot, the Mathers, and also of some 



266 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

of their wives. Of the theology of the time, he gives 
no more of the blazing kind than is needful to a full 
idea of the sermons of the divines, while of other extracts 
there are enough to show that if the people thought 
much upon the wrath to come, they also sought pious 
and godly living. Perhaps the most curious theological 
examples are the denunciations launched by the Quakers 
at Endicott and his fellows, in the style of the Hebrew 
prophets: "Woe, woe to thee, thou bloody town of Boston, 
and the rest that are confederate with thee, and it thou 
canst not escape — thou who hast shed the blood of the 
innocent people called Quakers, and imprisoned and 
fined them, and taken away their goods, and they have 
become a prey unto thee, for thee to exercise thy cruelty 
upon them; and thou boasts in thy wickedness, and 
'thinks thou dost God good service to brand and put 
to death' the people called Quakers. Verily this is the 
thoughts and intents of the hearts of many of you in 
New England; but especially within thee, and within thy 
jurisdiction that belongs to thee, O thou town of Boston!" 
Of this kind of jeremiad there is a considerable amount, 
but the extract is interesting as an example of that com- 
mand of Biblical style to which much of the earlier 
volumes owe what literary merit they contain. The 
Scripture, from the time that the Bible was a new book 
in England, was almost an English dialect; and in these 
divines of New England one sees how invigorating it was. 
Undoubtedly it encouraged the exhortatory style of 
harangue, but it gave force to the utterance of the mind, 
and from a literary point of view great influence is to be 
ascribed to it. Wherever the style rises and becomes 
fervid, one easily perceives the study of the Bible; intel- 
lectual passion, high feeling of all kinds, took on this 



COLONIAL BOOKS 267 

Scriptural expression; it was the poetry, the highest form 
of impassioned speech, of the period. Even in descrip- 
tions one sees its dominating influence. It is not the 
mosaic of Biblical words that is referred to, but the 
very spirit of the orator who pours them forth. Here is 
an admirable instance of the manner of it; and a more 
vigorous picture of battle, one more abundant in the 
ancient English force, could hardly be found. It is from 
the pen of William Hooke. 

"Here ride some dead men swagging in their deep 
saddles; there fall others alive upon their dead horses; 
death sends a message to those from the mouth of the 
muskets; these it talks with face to face, and stabs 
them in the fifth rib. In yonder file there is a man 
hath his arms struck off from his shoulder, another by 
him hath lost his leg; here stands a soldier with half a 
face, there fights another upon his stumps, and at once 
both kills and is killed; not far off lies a company wal- 
lowing in their sweat and gore; such a man whilst he 
chargeth his musket is discharged of his life, and falls 
upon his dead fellow. Every battle of the warrior is 
with confused noise and garments rolled in blood. Death 
reigns in the field, and is sure to have the day, which 
side soever falls. In the mean while (O formidable!) 
the infernal fiends follow the camp to catch after the 
souls of rude nefarious soldiers (such as are commonly 
men of that calling), who fight themselves fearlessly into 
the mouth of hell for revenge, a booty, or a little revenue. 
How thick and threefold do they speed one another to 
destruction! A day of battle is a day of harvest for 
the devil." 

Such an extract is sufficient to show that these pages 
are not without masterly style. It is interesting to ob- 



268 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

serve, too, in these theological portions the efforts of 
the imaginative faculties of the mind to make themselves 
felt, in parable and fancied dialogue, and here and there 
one comes on that not unfrequent union of the actor and 
the preacher which was offensive to the usually grave 
and serious ways of the Puritan pulpit. There was one 
preacher who enacted Christ's agony and impersonated 
God dropping sinners into the pit. Perhaps long dis- 
courses encouraged such sporadic attempts at variety. 

Outside of this infusion of the noble language of 
Scripture into style, there is little for the literary critic 
to notice. In the minds of the writers one perceives 
no great distinction, no remarkable individual gifts. It 
is plain that piety and strength of character must have 
sustained intellectual power in these leaders of the com- 
munity. Jonathan Edwards was the sole example of a 
mind of the first order in the colonies, and his meta- 
physical analysis and closeness of logic stand by them- 
selves, apart from all else in the collection; for though 
Bishop Berkeley is included as a contributor to Ameri- 
can literature, and some pages of Berkeleyism are 
interpolated, the mind refuses to regard him as other 
than an Englishman of the mother country. John 
Norton, also, occupies a solitary niche, with his style 
deeply imbued with classical example and studded with 
the names and maxims of the ancients. He alone shows 
the powerful influence of the old collegiate learning; 
nor did he emulate the example of Cotton, whom he 
eulogizes as "savoring more of the cross of Christ than 
of human learning." In him alone are those mingled 
strains of pagan learning and Puritanism which were most 
happily blended in Milton. The other noted ministers 
of the early colonists have a family resemblance, and 



COLONIAL BOOKS 269 

their memory, as here shown, exemplifies the common 
ideal of the "godly men" who planted the church in the 
new soil. 

In the broad view which such a collection as this 
gives, one trait in the public spirit of the colonists stands 
out prominently with equal eminence in both the lay and 
clerical authors, in New England and in Virginia. There 
were carpers, of course, restless spirits, adventurers of 
all sorts, who had fault to find, who felt irked by re- 
straint, and would have produced some Gonzalo's com- 
monwealth. But, commonly speaking, they looked upon 
this country, this wilderness as they called it, as a para- 
dise, a land of promise and plenty, where the poor people 
of the Old World could begin life anew. The terms in 
which they describe the fertility of the land, the ex- 
cellence of the climate, the speed with which comfort 
was obtained, all the advantages of material prosperity, 
are identical with those now associated in our minds 
with the new West. Kansas and Nebraska were not 
praised more in their day, nor was the opportunity the 
West offers for the poor to build homes of plenty more 
persistently and glowingly put forth than is the lot of 
the planter and the colonist subject for congratulation 
in many of these extracts. It is true there were Indians, 
but, generally speaking, the Indians were kind friends to 
the first comers; there were shipwrecks, such as that 
marvelous one of Thacher and Avery on their August 
voyage from Ipswich to Marblehead, which gave the 
name to Thacher's Island, but such perils were excep- 
tional. The well-being of the people at large was greater 
than in the mother country; they were full of hope and 
energy, and rapidly developed that versatility in ex- 
pedients and keenness in acquiring wealth which were to 



270 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

be the great traits of their descendants. They prized, 
too, from an early date, their liberties. These were 
never left unmentioned in the enumeration of their 
blessings. Nor was it many years before they were 
proud of their achievements, like a Western community; 
only that they were more prone to see the hand of God 
in it, and to look on themselves as God's people, of whom 
he had a special care. This was true more particularly 
of New England. The heresies that arose among them 
are a proof of the free action of their minds. The perse- 
cution of the dissenters, of Anne Hutchinson and Roger 
Williams, and the delusion of the Salem witchcraft have 
been made much of; but however lamentable these seem 
now, in a different age and a more settled society, they 
were then looked on as religious disorders of the same 
nature, relative to the commonwealth, as were the doings 
of Morton at Merrymount in a secular way. The Puri- 
tans believed in government, and had the English sense 
for it, and they valued their liberties likewise in an 
English temper. When the most has been charged 
against them, there remains the state they founded, with 
the public spirit that grew up with it; and the fact that 
from the first they nursed this high hope of their for- 
tunes, looked on the land as their own and believed in 
it, and regarded their prosperity in a free condition as 
God's dealing with them was one fundamental ground 
underlying the entire revolutionary period. The Revo- 
lution was ingrained in them by their birth as citizens of 
the New World. 

This is one reason why in the third volume of the 
work there is no break in the continuity of the Puritan 
spirit. A new political question had arisen, and men in 
secular life were called to the front by it, but the tern- 



COLONIAL BOOKS 271 

perament of the people as expressed in the new voices 
was the same. Society had grown more varied, and 
commerce and law were coming into rivalry with the 
pulpit; yet the mental tone is still one of sobriety, dig- 
nity, and a fervor which did not pass into unreason. At 
the beginning of this volume stands Franklin, and nearly 
all the men of the Revolution appear before the end is 
reached. The change that is noticed is a great one. 
One feels that the colonies, in obtaining independence, 
have passed into the state of a true nation. Washing- 
ton's "Farewell Address" is here, and more than the 
"Declaration" itself, which is also here, those words of 
Washington signal a new era. Jefferson, Adams, Madi- 
son, Patrick Henry's famous speech, Paine, and Otis 
admonish the reader that the question is no longer of 
sea or land adventures, of Berkeley's or Edwards's 
theories, of Cambridge or Saybrook platforms, but of 
those broad matters which concern the founding of a 
stable state. This volume is necessarily largely polit- 
ical, and yet the selection here has also been excellently 
made, and the nature of the contents lightened by intro- 
ducing many letters of our public men. Even here one 
does not come into the view of literature, in the ordi- 
nary sense. The editor has done his best by the poets 
and poetesses, but without any success in restoring to 
them any of their contemporary luster, such as it was. 
In the earlier volumes there were a few verses, all that 
could possibly be called into service ; in this volume there 
are many, and those which illustrate the popular songs 
of the Revolution well deserve such remembrance as is 
given them ; but even with Freneau, the first name which 
yet retains a lingering reputation in the world, he cannot 
persuade us that Poetry had yet come to the shores which 



272 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Berkeley and Herbert had prophesied should be her 
chosen seat. There is only one copy of verses, by a 
youth who died at twenty-two, and left this pathetic waif 
of pleasantry behind him, which has a spark of nature 
in it, and with it the volume ends. 

These volumes are an excellent and convenient 
resume of all writings which by a liberal use of the word 
can be called American, for the first century and a half 
after the settlement. The extracts afford a complete and 
abundant view of this literature in travel, history, anec- 
dote, theology, politics, and versifying; and the passages 
chosen are such as illustrate in the most instructive and 
entertaining way the habits and customs, the modes of 
thought, the lives, and the public spirit of the people, 
so far as any record of them survives. Many of the 
originals from which these extracts are made are rare 
or difficult of access, and many of them also are such 
that even a patient reader would never hunt out their 
contents. The editor claims that the "first two volumes 
contain a more select and compact representation of the 
writings of our colonial divines than has before been 
attempted." Certainly these two volumes serve the 
purpose of exhibiting the general character of the Puri- 
tan mind in New England admirably, and the justice 
with which a somewhat delicate task has been discharged 
is notable. There are few persons whom it is easier to 
misrepresent than those divines of the old stock; but as 
they are illustrated here by their own words, they really 
seem to live and speak in their proper persons. As much 
can be said, too, for the sufficiency of the tales of per- 
sonal adventure, of Indian warfare, and of the disturbers 
of the colonies. In the third volume, which summarizes 
the growth and progress of the ideas of the Revolution 



COLONIAL BOOKS 273 

and contains its greatest state papers, one feels that only 
a part of that large mass of admirable political speech 
and discussion is given; but the best of it has been in- 
cluded, and so as to reflect in a lively way the times 
and the men. 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 

The novels of Charles Brockden Brown possess only 
an historical interest. He was the first to write Ameri- 
can fiction, and his works had the good fortune to please 
in London before the time of Jane Austen and Sir Walter 
Scott; he came, too, in the period after Mrs. Radcliffe 
and Monk Lewis, and had his genius been stronger he 
might have had the distinction of being remembered as 
the representative of the change of the novel from the 
wildly romantic into a more natural type. He stands 
just at that point of development, but he had not force 
or character enough to rise to a position in literature 
which should command attention beyond his own genera- 
tion. He was born in Philadelphia. With an original 
taste for letters, a vigorous imagination, and a wide 
curiosity for knowledge of all kinds, a literary profession 
was inevitable. He tried his hand at law, but abandoned 
the study after a brief experience of it, and gave his 
mind to the moral and political speculation then rife, 
to the manners and customs of nations, to history, and 
to the individuals whom he created in imagination, and 
sent on their travels. He wrote several novels, and left 
fragments of others. His political pamphlets, and the 
"European and American Annals" which he wrote for the 
American Register from 1806 to 1809, are of solid worth, 
but are not included in his works. He died in 1810, 
at the age of thirty-nine. 

This short biography is all the preface needed by one 

275 



276 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

who reads his writings, and it might easily be dispensed 
with. It is not his life, which was not remarkable, but 
his position, that throws light upon his novels. He was 
in his time a reforming novelist. For one thing, he 
thought it was the part of an American to use those 
"sources of amusement to the fancy and instruction to 
the heart that are peculiar to ourselves," and which he 
declares "are equally numerous and inexhaustible." He 
announced his purpose "to profit by some of these 
sources," and in "Edgar Huntley" he tried to "exhibit 
a series of adventures growing out of the condition of 
our country, and connected with one of the most com- 
mon and wonderful diseases or affections of the human 
frame." Here we have the two characteristics which 
are aimed at now by every tyro, truth in local color and 
in the facts of science. That he understood himself to 
be an innovator may be easily gathered from his frank 
assertion of his "one merit — that of calling forth the 
passion and engaging the sympathy of the reader 
by means hitherto unemployed by preceding authors. 
Puerile superstition and exploded manners, Gothic castles 
and chimeras, are the materials usually employed 
for this end." He for his part was going to deal with 
facts. He was, in a word, a realist. But who would 
have guessed it, if he had not published the notice in 
his preface? To what "facts" did he have recourse to ex- 
terminate and supplant those "Gothic castles and 
chimeras" with which Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk Lewis, 
in the van of good Sir Walter, had occupied the ground 
of romance? To what field of the conflict, to what stage 
of the comedy, would he direct attention, that his readers 
might no more be cheated and fooled with entertainment 
afforded by "puerile superstition and exploded manners"?. 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 277 

Why, ventriloquism, and sleep-walking, and the wild 
red Indian! There is something humorous in this issue 
of the first realistic reformer, for one cannot doubt that 
he took himself seriously. To a later generation, 
Brown's heroes and heroines are very far from any 
humanity that rides in our street-cars; they seem little 
more credible than the Nun and the Gallant they were 
to do away with; his tales are wildly improbable, more 
impossible than ghosts by as much as one lays aside 
incredulity in reading of "Gothic castles." The realist 
of to-day must peruse these novels with much mirth, if 
he judges them by the style of to-day in men, and things, 
and fiction. 

It is hardly possible to give a true impression of the 
general character of Brown's six novels to one who has 
not read one or two of them, at least. They are with- 
out unity of design; there are several stories which 
interweave with one another in the same tale, but they 
are not correlated among themselves; the main narra- 
tive is not so much broken by episodes, but rather is 
itself a succession of slightly connected events and differ- 
ent family histories; the method, generally speaking, is 
like that of the novel of adventure, in which it is not 
the dramatic plot, but the exciting stages of a much- 
checkered career, that holds the attention. The better 
ones of the series, "Wieland," "Arthur Mervyn," and 
"Edgar Huntley," have some special feature, it is true. 
In one the mystery of the story is in ventriloquism, in 
another somnambulism; and the idea of supplanting 
supernatural by physical and quasi-scientific mystery 
was an original and useful one, fruitful still in our own 
days. In others the scenes of the yellow-fever epidemic 
in New York and Philadelphia, of which Brown had 



278 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

himself been a witness, afford the realistic element, and 
these are much the best done of anything from his pen; 
but here, too, it is to be observed that he discarded the 
supernatural only to hold fast to the exceptional. In the 
sphere of character and action he was still under the 
shadow of the old castle; the spectacular has given place 
to the sensational, but in the bosoms of Constantia and 
Jane, of Wieland and Ormond and Sarsefield, reigns the 
very breath of romantic passion, and adventure is the 
genius of their careers. As for the language in which 
they address one another, it was never heard off 
the stage of melodrama; they enter and strike attitudes 
and have their say; one would as soon think of interrupt- 
ing a set piece of fireworks as their speeches. The style, 
too, is, beyond concealment, tedious. The truth is, these 
novels are as much gone by as the Algerian pirates, with 
whom they were contemporary; even Mrs. Radcliffe and 
Monk Lewis have kept better pace with the modern 
reader than has Brown. 

Yet, historically, he is curiously interesting. His 
pages reflect both a state of mind and a mood of imagi- 
nation in which he shared only as a member of a larger 
world of men, some of whom were destined to a better 
fortune. It is not only the literary reformer who is 
found in the gallery of forgotten things; the portrait of 
the social innovator is as commonly to be met with there; 
and in Brown we find the stamp and impress of one of 
the most noted in his day and most obscure in ours — 
the philosopher William Godwin. Brown was familiar 
with his writings, as not long ago young men were with 
John Stuart Mill's. One reads between the lines in these 
tales the theory and maxims and speculation to which 
Godwin gave currency. In "J ane Talbot," the hero of 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 279 

the story is the typical young man with dangerous ideas 
— or he has that reputation in the ears of the world, 
and particularly of the mother of the young lady he 
would marry. Here is a sketch of the abandoned youth 
of the first days of the century. 

"A most fascinating book fell at length into his hands, 
which changed in a moment the whole course of his ideas. 
What he had before regarded with reluctance and terror, 
this book taught him to admire and love. The writer 
has the art of the grand deceiver — the fatal art of 
carrying the worst poison under the name and appear- 
ance of wholesome food; of disguising all that is impious, 
or blasphemous, or licentious, under the guise and sanc- 
tions of virtue. Colden had lived before this without 
examination or inquiry. His heart, his inclination, was 
perhaps on the side of religion and true virtue; but this 
book carried all his inclination, his zeal, and his enthu- 
siasm over to the adversary; and so strangely had he 
been perverted that he held himself bound, he conceived 
it to be his duty, to vindicate in private and public, to 
preach with vehemence, his new faith. The rage for 
making converts seized him." 

In this strain the mother writes to her daughter of 
Godwin's "Political Justice." The vigor of his influence 
must have been considerable in the community, his name 
must have been a standing target in society, when he was 
invoked by a novelist to create the character of such a 
man as Colden, even by rumor; and the fact that Colden 
is a blameless person, quite in the style of the virtuous 
and rather colorless philanthropist, which was then one 
of the ideals set up for youth, ought perhaps to indicate 
that Brown himself, who had speculated on the forbidden 
topic of the marriage relation, was not unscathed by the 



280 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

malign influence, though his character remained un- 
harmed. As reminiscences, in imaginative literature, of 
the philosophizing temper of the year 1800, all such pas- 
sages are worth remark. 

There is, too, in the novels a pervading conception of 
man as a creature of dark passions, which, had Brown 
written a score of years later, would have been called 
Byronic. Byron did not so much invent Byronism as 
clothe this type of passion with a power and lift it to 
a height that made it his own creation in literature; and 
it happened fortunately for his fame that he in his own 
person embodied it for the imagination of his contempo- 
raries. But premonitions of Byronism, and even in- 
complete prototypes of it, are to be found before his day; 
and in Brown's novels there are several such passages." 
Take this characterization: — 

"A youth of eighteen, a volunteer in a Russian army 
encamped in Bessarabia, made prey of a Tartar girl, 
found in the field of a recent battle. Conducting her 
to his quarters, he met a friend, who, on some pretense, 
claimed the victim. From angry words they betook 
themselves to swords. A combat ensued, in which the 
first claimant ran his antogonist through the body. He 
then bore his prize unmolested away, and, having exer- 
cised brutality of one kind upon the helpless victim, 
stabbed her to the heart, as an offering to the manes of 
Sarsefield, the friend whom he had slain. Next morning, 
willing more signally to expiate his guilt, he rushed alone 
upon a troop of Turkish foragers, and brought away five 
heads, suspended by their gory locks to his horse's mane. 
These he threw upon the grave of Sarsefield, and con- 
ceived himself fully to have expiated yesterday's offense. 
In reward for his prowess, the general gave him a 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 281 

commission in the Cossack troops. This youth was 
Ormond." 

Crude, brutal, coarsely laid on, it is; but Ormond — 
and we may say that his later career was all of a piece 
with this trifling anecdote of his teens — as essentially 
an earlier Lara. The entire atmosphere of "Ormond," 
which is a novel of violent passion and detestable wicked- 
ness, is pre-Byronic; and Brown's imagination, or his 
note-book from historical reading, was inexhaustibly 
fertile of the sort of incident instanced by the quotation 
above. The despised masters and mistresses of "puerile 
superstition" did not sup on horrors in more courses. 

It is not with Byron, however, but with Shelley, that 
Brown's name is lastingly associated. Shelley, whose own 
early romances in the German style remain to bear wit- 
ness to his first taste in fiction had just the right opinions 
and emotions to live in sympathizing imagination the lives 
of some of Brown's heroes, for at some points they 
touched his own career nearly. That passage which 
draws Colden's character, already quoted, might have 
been actually written of Shelley by some of his family 
detractors; he might have sat for the portrait of Col- 
den as the latter is represented by his friends, also. 
More than once, in the other novels, one comes on senti- 
ments, personal situations, and ideals of conduct through 
which one feels at once, if he is on the watch, the pulse 
of Shelley beating as he reads. For example, it is one 
of Brown's distinctions that his pages are devoted, when- 
ever they touch on female character, to the advocacy of 
the right of woman to equal education, and to a position 
of equal dignity intellectually, with man. Brown ap- 
pears to have been familiar with Mary Wollstonecraft's 
writings on the subject, and to have adopted her views 



282 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

so far, at least, as the mental training of woman is con- 
cerned. The reiteration of this doctrine, both openly 
in the author's discourse, and indirectly in the conversa- 
tion of the characters, was enough of itself to win Shel- 
ley's adherence. On the imaginative side, Brown 
touched him also in the marrow; for Shelley's tempera- 
ment, being extravagantly romantic in his nonage, was 
the local habitation in which Ormonds and Sarsefields 
and their tribe thrive. Ventriloquism and somnambulism, 
in their turn, were the kind of science Shelley studied; he 
perhaps pursued chemistry as much with the hope of 
raising a ghost as from any other motive; science to 
him was only another form of that marvel which he 
first found in the supernatural. In the poet's works, per- 
haps the name Constantia, in the lyric "To Constantia 
Singing," was taken from the novel of "Ormond"; but 
further than that nothing is traceable. 

These are the principal points of Brown's historical 
interest. As a precursor of Cooper, or Hawthorne, or 
Poe, a position that has been claimed for him, he cannot 
be regarded; the analogy between their works and his 
is of the slightest. He was a romancer of the old kind, 
although he made efforts in the direction of realism; 
he has no art; he is awkward, long-winded, and melo- 
dramatic, interested almost wholly in adventure, and 
save for the accident of coming first and being a Phila- 
delphian would be without note. 



LUCY LARCOM 

A MEMORIAL ADDRESS BEFORE THE BEVERLY 
HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

The memory of Lucy Larcom extends beyond her vil- 
lage-borders, and is familiar in many families of her own 
country as well as in some English homes. It was her 
fortune to touch many lives, and the touch was not easily 
to be forgotten. As a teacher, she had personal power; 
as a writer, she had companionableness ; and, in the 
closer relations of life, especially in friendship, she exer- 
cised that intimate influence which is a peculiar gift and 
belongs to temperament. The recognition she received 
was, for these reasons, largely personal and friendly, and 
it was natural that upon her death, those who valued her 
as a part of their own lives, should gather, as they did 
in one and another place, to hold memorial services; but 
it belongs to our own community, of which she made one, 
to give in a marked way public tribute to her life and 
work, and to say that parting word of honor which is due 
on the cessation of such a life, now finished, as it was 
lived, in our midst. Of that life on its more personal 
side I leave her biographer to speak ; to us, who were her 
neighbors, her personality was near and close; but to 
others she was an author; and for them, who are the 
greater number, her memory must abide mainly in her 
books ; and it is with these — their character and mean- 
ing — that it falls to me to deal, seeking thus to show 

283 



284 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

more clearly the value of her life, the nature of her work, 
and the influence that now survives after her labor is 
done. 

Literature, in its pure form, is nothing but expres- 
sion — the expression of life; in proportion as a writer's 
experience embraces that of his own community, his 
people and country, what he writes becomes the expres- 
sion of the common life of all, and is therefore of interest 
to all; and so, in ever widening scope, as the horizons of 
knowledge and sympathy extend, literature becomes the 
voice of a community, a nation, or, in the greatest in- 
stances, of mankind. Lucy Larcom was not in this sense 
a great writer, but she gave utterance to the common 
feelings and thoughts, and especially the habitual ideals 
of the people among whom she was reared; and, in a 
peculiar way, she expressed New England womanhood, 
and, in her own person, stood for it, as one of its strong 
and characteristic types. She wrote, so to speak, from 
the soil in which she was rooted, — from the things she 
saw, heard and felt, just as others about her might do, 
out of her own sensations and emotions, out of her own 
life. Whoever has read her verses in connection with her 
"New England Girlhood," must have observed how many 
of her poems were memories of childhood in the town 
whose child-world she describes. Here she was born and 
grew up, differing from her companions, perhaps, by a 
greater openness to the world without, and by a more 
thoughtful intimacy with the world within, and especially 
by having the native gift to write. She had the same 
education as others; and the round of her days was that 
of the whole village, lying drowsily, as she describes it, 
between the ocean and the river, with storms in winter 
and flowers in summer, and no events except the arrival 



LUCY LARCOM 285 

of the stage, the home-coming of the seafaring people, 
and the weekly sermon. It was a child's world that she 
thus remembered; but there were elements in it that sank, 
deep as life, into her being, that mastered her will, and 
entered, as an inward spirit, into her hopes and labors. 
There the needle was magnetized and the pole of her life 
determined while, unaware, she noticed only the tides 
washing in, the ebb and flow of the seasons of the year, 
and the aged faces about her. From what secret of birth 
or by what cunning of nature the poetic impulse has its 
source, none can tell; but it is easy to discern upon what 
it is nourished, and there were about her girlhood ele- 
ments sufficient to wake the germ and sustain its life; and 
these, as rarely happens, were to be continuous in her 
thoughts and feelings. 

In Lucy Larcom's verse there were three such prin- 
ciples, formative and supporting, which governed her 
from the beginning of her conscious life. The first was 
the power of the sea. It has been long observed that the 
poetry of the world has been made by the great sea na- 
tions, Greece, Italy and England, and there is something 
in the ocean more, perhaps, than in any other great 
natural feature that stirs the imagination and generates 
these vague moods that belong to the poetic tempera- 
ment. But without going too far to find what lies near 
at hand, it is plain that the ocean brought to the girlhood 
of Lucy Larcom the first impression of the changeful 
beauty and vast power of nature, the first horizon of 
romantic and dreamy suggestion, and the first touch of 
mysterious fate. The lives of the people were blended 
with it, and the town took color and character from it. 
She herself speaks of the waifs and strays of foreign 
lands that gave picturesqueness to the streets, of the 



286 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

voyages always on the lips of the living, and of the watch- 
ing and waiting in the homes along the road and the lanes 
— "hardly a house but had its sorrow of one who went 
and came not back." It was the same experience that 
Longfellow recalled from his boyhood farther down the 
coast: — 

"I remember the black wharves and the slips, 
And the sea-tides tossing free, 
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
And the magic of the sea." 

And she saw it always, gleaming and restless and voice- 
ful — and she dreaded it. There is no love for the sea 
in her poems. The two best-known, the companion 
pieces, "Hannah" and "Skipper Ben," are sea-tragedies. 
The best single poem, as I think, — at least of this 
class — "A Sea Glimpse" — is a land-piece, in which the 
girl, looking out for her lover, occupies the foreground 
relieved against the harbor-sky; it embodies the joy of 
danger passed. The stanzas that describe "the two pale 
sisters" of Baker's Island lights, exhaust the imagery of 
guardianship against a perilous and betraying enemy 
which lies in wait for prey. In every instance, nearly, 
the sea is an object of fear; and even the boat, wreathed 
with bittersweet, dropping along the ledges and the 
sands, keeps well in-shore, with a shudder at last — 

"Anchored in the dusk, a spell 
From the folds of twilight fell 
On the bay's black, star-strewn floor; 
Awe, with that weird glitter crept 
Shuddering through our thoughts; we stept 
Gladly on firm land once more." 



LUCY LARCOM 287 

This is her mood — one of dread. Afterwards, when 
she had begun to go away from the sea-side, she acknowl- 
edged frankly that she preferred the scenery and com- 
panionship of the mountains, and with them she often 
spent her summers. But the mountains were to her a 
kind of spiritual landscape, nigh to heaven and kindred 
with an aspiring life; they never had, however, the hu- 
man power of the ocean, never touched the common life 
so intimately and participated in it, for good or ill. The 
proof is that the mountains gave her no such poems as 
the "Wild Roses of Cape Ann." She saw the prairie, too, 
and lived on it, but she never won its secret. None of 
the poems are so outward — so of the eye, merely — as 
those in which she describes it, though she gives a few 
well-rendered bits, in "Elsie in Illinois": — 

"Garden without path or fence, 
Rolling up its billowy bloom 
To her low, one-windowed room." 

or, better still, the lines describing the husband coming 
home — 

"Coming with the evening sky, — 
Through the prairie, through the sky, — 
Each as from eternity." 

There is the spaciousness of the prairie and its near- 
ness to the sky in that; but such touches are rare. So 
far as nature was concerned, she must be thought of as 
living between the two horizons of the mountains north- 
ward and the sea eastward, with a glimpse of the Merri- 
mac between. In rendering the outward aspects of this 
region she is at home, and she describes with equal power 
the two great features of the scene, with more delicacy 
than strength, but often with great beauty of atmosphere. 



288 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

The second principle, that governed in her work, was 
sympathy with humble life. She was born of the people 
and she remained one of them. She worked for her living, 
first at Lowell, and though mill-life in those days seems 
like an anticipation of girls' colleges, still it was mill- 
life — work among the machines for a daily wage, and, 
throughout her life, she worked, as a teacher at school 
and then among her books as a writer ; and it was always 
a frugal living that she earned, without superfluity, com- 
pelling simplicity in all things — the life of the common 
New England people. But such a life, humble and modest, 
has a saving grace, and of it she reaped the full benefi- 
cence. It breeds respect for others, and self-respect. It 
constitutes a bond with simple human lives, with the 
mass, by means of which sympathy expands and the 
knowledge of what is fundamental in worth grows plain. 
To be so near to others brings both opportunity and 
power of service; and Lucy Larcom, merely because she 
was one in this large community, won all the influence 
she ever had. Merely as an example, she affected many 
lives. It is impossible to conjecture how many a working 
girl, learning of her, has derived moral strength and 
mental impulse, and also patience, simply because such 
circumstances had once been shared by a woman who 
showed to all that womanhood was neither hurt in its 
finer qualities nor cheapened in others' eyes by such a 
life. Her poems, especially devoted to the praise of the 
working life, are not the most successful, but their sp. it 
is democratic and inspiriting to those who may find the 
burdens of daily labor heavy. She was careful to pre- 
serve her remembrance of her younger days and sym- 
pathy with this common life; and by means of this she 
gained her audience, which was always in the class to 



LUCY LARCOM 289 

which she belonged; and she was understood by them be- 
cause she used the language of their experience. One 
curious result of this sympathy may be noticed by the 
way. In her poems she had a habit of praising the com- 
monest flowers because they were many and humble and 
were content to bloom in every place. 

"The weed, to him who loves it, is a flower — " is one 
of her quotations, and she had a certain tenderness for 
all weeds that could pass as flowers and wrote upon them, 
like neglected children of the roadside. It calls to mind 
one of Lincoln's great sayings: "I think God loves the 
plain people, because he made so many of them." 

The third principle in this poetry, as a whole, is the 
moral and religious spirit of the community in which 
Lucy Larcom was bred. It made the first impression 
upon her, in childhood, through its hymns. She learned 
hundreds of them — 

"The long, quaint words, the hum-drum rhyme, 
The verse that reads like prose — " 

as she herself describes them; but how deeply they in- 
fluenced her is shown by other passages of the same poem 
in which she praises them with a fervor caught from 
themselves: — 

"The psalm-tunes of the Puritan; 
The hymns that dared to go 
Down shuddering through the abyss of man, 
His gulfs of conscious woe; 
That scaled the utmost height of bliss 
Where the veiled seraph sings, 
And worlds unseen brought down to this 
On music's mighty wings." 

On the other hand, the doctrinal part of the Sunday 
service did not much engage her interest, or affect her 



2 9 o LITERARY MEMOIRS 

own poetic work. It did not enter into her mind in any 
vitalizing way. One, however, who was born with the 
literary gift, could not escape the intellectual influence 
in the New England sermon which constituted largely 
the mental life of the people; and in several ways she was 
formed by it. In particular she derived from this source 
the habit of finding a lesson in the fall of the sparrow and 
the cutting down of the grass, or, in other words, of 
moralizing nature. She never seems to care for beauty 
merely for its own sake, or, at least, such a mood was rare 
and subordinate in her life. She sought to ally the beauty 
of nature with some human association or some spiritual 
meaning, and to turn nature into parables. 

"The universe is one great loving thought, 
Writ in hieroglyphs of bud and bloom" — 

she says; and, in detail, the rock that makes the rill break 
into murmuring sound becomes a symbol of the blessing 
of obstacles — 

"The happy trouble of the rock 
That makes her life a song"; 

and this is the usual method of allegory in her verse, 
which would afford hundreds of such examples. A second 
peculiarity, which was, at any rate, fostered by the liter- 
ary characteristics of the New England sermon, is the 
habit of seeking short and condensed expressions of 
thought, like maxims or proverbs in style, but original. 
Such lines stand out in the verse; they are quotable lines; 
and are meant to stick in the mind. Her poems are full 
of them. Here are one or two characteristic examples: 

"Said Psyche, Pain assures me that I live!" 
"To stifle truth is to stop her breath." 



LUCY LARCOM 291 

"The threshold where our hopes begin to climb, is our 
horizon." 

"I said it in the meadow path, 
I say it on the mountain stairs; — 
The best things any mortal hath 
Are those which every mortal shares." 

All this is in a moralizing strain, and illustrates also 
how her thoughts as well as her images were dominated 
by the mastery of that New England spirit which was 
absorbed in the moral life on one hand and in religious 
life upon the other. But she did not owe her religious 
thoughts directly to the elder Puritanism from which 
she derived her moral and intellectual cast of mind. 

These three strands, then, the sea with its poetic sug- 
gestions, humble life with its understanding sympathies, 
and the preoccupation of the New England mind with 
morality and the spiritual meaning of nature, are the 
material of which Lucy Larcom's poems are woven. She 
thus pictures and expresses the inward life and outward 
circumstances of the people, whose traditions she in- 
herited and whose ideals she accepted. She was deeply 
attracted to the soil she sprang from, and loved the land- 
scape and those whose figures and lives were blended with 
it; but it was the landscape and the people of the older 
town of her childhood that she idealized in her verse, and 
thus left a poetic transcript of it in her book which we 
should be very grateful for, inasmuch as it gives to our 
past, in some sense, the transforming and perpetuating 
touch of literature, and unites us with the few other towns 
of the country that have been thus fortunate. What this 
older life meant to her, and how to her eyes it was made 
up of the elements already mentioned, so blended as to be 
inextricably one, is best shown, perhaps — to take a 



2 9 2 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

single instance — in the closing lines of the "Wild Roses 
of Cape Ann": 

"Thank God for those old-fashioned sea-side folk, 
And for the home that rooted their strong lives 
For many generations. Virtues far 
Out-perfuming the rose, — pure souls, untouched 
By the world's frosty standards, — are not these 
True growths of our New England atmosphere, 
By rarest of exotics unreplaced? 
Strangers have found that landscape's beauty out, 
And hold its deeds and titles. But the waves 
That wash the quiet shores of Beverly, 
The winds that gossip with the waves, the sky 
That immemorially blends, listening, 
Have reminiscences that still assert 
Inalienable claims from those who won, 
By sweat of their own brows, this heritage." 

It was thus that in her principal poetic works she said 
farewell to the old home. 

And here I might end; but all would miss something 
which, everywhere present in her book, has been unmen- 
tioned. I mean the spiritual instinct in it, that element 
which was in her far stronger than the merely poetic im- 
pulse, overbore it, as life went on, and in the end dis- 
placed it. The verses which she wrote in early life are 
the most popular and widest known among her own 
people, and they are, poetically, the best — most fresh, 
most original, most disengaged from any ulterior pur- 
pose beyond the simple poem itself. As she grew older, 
the purely human, the individual and dramatic element, 
as it is shown in "Hannah" and "A Sea-Glimpse," gave 
way more and more to the reflective and moral mood, and 
finally that mood itself became completely spiritualized, 
and she ended as a poet of purely religious moods. It 



LUCY LARCOM 293 

has already been said that this progress and growth in 
her was not directly due to the elder Puritanism. Yet, 
at first, she received her ideal of life from that source, 
and to her that ideal in its practical form was the applica- 
tion of a rather stern conscience to rather hard work — 
a laborious life of duty as it came. But on the imagina- 
tive side, on the side that looks for a strip of blue sky 
over the plowed field, and the sea-furrows, she was 
obliged to seek elsewhere for horizon and prospect. She 
found them at last in books, — in volumes that in her 
generation suffered a new birth out of old time, in the 
works of Tauler, the German mystic, and Plato, the 
Greek idealist, and others of grave and reverend names, 
then, in the time of Emerson, much on the lips of young 
women of growing and ambitious minds. But, in her own 
case, she found her nearest guides in the sermons of 
Maurice and Robertson. The least thoughtful reader of 
her works must have been struck by her great capacity 
to enjoy and appreciate life — mere living. The lines 
with which she closes the full-voiced and resonant 
"Thanksgiving Hymn" — 

"For thine own great gift of Being 
I thank thee, O my God—" 

might serve as a descriptive motto of all her works, so 
constant is the spirit of joyfulness in life that inspires 
them. She especially sympathized with the vast ener- 
gies of nature's vitality, and felt the contagion of it — 

"Making it joy to think of swelling buds, 
And fruit, slow-ripening on the apple-trees, 
And young birds fledging in the robin's nest." 

She felt this current in the outward world, this stream 



294 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

of unexhausted being, and she thought of it with Words- 
worth's faith — 

"That every flower that grows 
Enjoys the air it breathes." 

This was the world without. But the inward force 
within herself, and in man, the life of conscious and as- 
piring being, was even more deeply realized by her as 
an object of awe and mystery. On the one side was na- 
ture, on the other the soul ; but if she heard in that elder 
Puritanism the voice of the Psalmist declaring God in 
his works, and the voice of the Apostle declaring Christ 
in man, they were not convincing voices which should 
seem the expression of her own experience. There was a 
gladness in her thoughts of life, in both of these great 
manifestations, that needed a different atmosphere to 
grow in, and she found it in Maurice and Robertson 
through whom she came in contact with the most spiritual 
and personal religious thought of the English world and 
her thoughts then began to take on that spiritual reality, 
that direct experience of enlightenment and enthusiasm 
within, in which, doubtless, she was also much sustained 
and reassured by her friendship with Whittier, whose 
"faith had center everywhere, nor cared to fix itself to 
form." Thus she led by herself her own life with her 
own thoughts; and, still meditating, came finally to iden- 
tify the energy of life in nature and in man with a spirit- 
ual power working out its will in both. In three stanzas 
she condensed this conclusion, and her aspiration with 
respect to that power: — 

"O Life that breathest in all sweet things 
That bud and bloom upon the earth, 
That fillest the sky with song and wings, 
That walkest the world through human birth; 



LUCY LARCOM 295 

O Life that lightest in every man 
A spark of thine own being's flame, 
And wilt that spark to glory fan, — 
Our listening souls would hear that name. 

Thou art the Eternal Christ of God, 
The Life unending, unbegun; 
The Deity brightening through the cloud; 
The Presence of the Invisible One." 

With such convictions, arrived at through conscientious 
years of thought and growth, she could not but feel her 
tasks in life absorbed in the one labor of endeavoring to 
share with others the experience which was her own, in 
these regions of truth and emotion, and so moved now 
also by the strong influence of her later friendship with 
Bishop Brooks, she had already entered on her work as a 
religious guide and teacher, when her death came. Her 
books on these themes, in prose, were more widely scat- 
tered abroad and were, perhaps, more influential in life, 
than her poems had ever been, and among her poems, 
except in our neighborhood and the homes of those who 
care for New England with special warmth, the longest- 
lived will be her hymns and the other religious verses of 
these last years. 

Such, at least to my eyes, was the life of the woman 
whose portrait now looks down on us from these walls; 
and it is well that the first thus to be hung upon them 
with ceremony, is that of one so deserving of that re- 
membrance which it is our main object, as a Society, to 
secure and perpetuate. It was a life well lived. And yet, 
after all, the significant thing in it is not that she caught 
the beauty of these fields and woods, and the sea that we 
look on by day and night, and strove to make them 
poetical ground; not that she praised the lowly life and 



296 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

the virtues that inhere in it and illustrated them in her- 
self with simplicity and power; not that she used the 
flowers of our wayside for parables, and shaped those 
close-cut sentences that carry home to the heart the 
truths by which daily life is led; not even that she found 
inspiration for herself and friendly aid for others in a 
life-long religious meditation; but rather that she showed, 
in the total unity of her life and work, that the pursuit of 
an ideal, however conceived, is the surest pledge that a 
life shall be nobly led itself, and have greatest utility to 
others. Her sense of the great blessing of life, of the 
duty to develop it to the utmost of one's capacity for 
living in mind and heart as well as in the body, gives a 
ring to every line in which she urges the soul onward — 

"Climb for the white flower of thy dream!" 



ON THE DEATH OF HOLMES 

The death of Oliver Wendell Holmes closed many ca- 
reers in one end. His versatility was such that one hesi- 
tates whether to speak first of the man of society, or the 
literary wit, or the practitioner, or the novelist, or the 
poet. This diversity sprang rather from the different 
employments to which he put his mind than from the 
various richness of natural genius. It was in some degree 
the product of the influences of the city, which operate 
upon men of education to bring out their whole capacity. 
He was from his breeding both academic and urban; and 
he carried out to the end the early aims and ambitions 
which thrive in the centers of learning and society. He 
was one of that rare class of minds to which their en- 
vironment is not a limitation. He harmonized with the 
conditions of living into which he was born, with the 
settled order of old Boston, old Harvard, and the Satur- 
day Club; and as he made the most of them, they made 
the most of him. The identity between himself, as a 
literary personality, and Boston was the largest part of 
his good fortune. He was that best sort of a representa- 
tive of his city, a growth out of its previous society, tra- 
ditions, and prejudices. The exclusiveness which made 
him prefer a man of family was a part of his genius; the 
same feeling, with a difference, made him prefer his own 
town to the rest of the universe; and thus it was not by 
accident, but by right of nature, that he should be the 
official poet of Harvard, which filled a larger relative 

297 



2 98 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

place in Boston life than in these days, and the loyal 
laureate of his city to salute, to toast, and to bid farewell 
to the guests whom it most honored. It would be unjust, 
nevertheless, to refer to him now solely or mainly as a 
poet. He succeeded quite as well in the use of his other 
talents, and these helped largely in establishing the repu- 
tation of his later days. The scientific element, even in 
his books, is a constant quantity; it colors his novels and 
often gives glow to his stanzas, and in his printed conver- 
sations over the table it is ever at hand for illustration. 
His wit, too, and those felicities of which he learned the 
secret in private talk with his friends, are ingredients 
never lacking. He must be regarded as poet, professor, 
and autocrat at once, if one would have a rounded con- 
ception of him, and understand what sort of personal 
power in him it was that extended a local reputation over 
a continent. 

When one reviews his life, perhaps the most obvious 
trait of it is its apparent lack of change. It is true that 
his literary career did not really begin until he was well 
on in middle life; he came forward then with a mature 
and well-stored mind, and the great impression he made 
was due to the self-repression which had allowed him to 
come at last full-handed and with his thoughts and 
manner unstaled. It would have been remarkable if his 
literary talent had suffered any serious modification after 
such a success so late in life. But as a poet he had been 
precocious, and there are very many of his verses, upon 
all sorts of occasions and in several styles, which were 
produced in the earlier years of his manhood; and in 
these there is the same quality, somewhat less highly 
developed, perhaps, as in the last lines from his pen. He 
had never attempted the modern style in poetry; there 



ON THE DEATH OF HOLMES 299 

are no "native wood-notes wild" in his range, nothing in 
"the pastoral line," nothing of Keats or the later ro- 
manticists; he was from the start a poet of society, and 
he found it convenient and perhaps necessary to continue 
in the somewhat mechanical measures of the past, which 
are best fitted for artificial and occasional verse. 

Apart from the fact that Dr. Holmes adopted and re- 
tained these simple and prosaic measures, one other cir- 
cumstance possibly tended to stiffen his early choice and 
practice into the gyves of habit. Most of his verses were 
not merely recited, but were written for recitation. The 
poet kept in mind the appeal to the audience necessary 
for success, the momentary stroke, the immediate flash 
of appreciation, the mixture of humor and epigrammatic 
eloquence, most effective to the ear of an assembly; and 
to secure these ends the Queen Anne forms of verse are 
the best adapted. His employment as a poet of occasions, 
no doubt, had its effect in accustoming him to write from 
an intellectual and social impulse out of which the poetry 
of the nineteenth century does not spring. There is 
little to show, however, that he had any lyrical gift of 
the higher order. His vigorous faculty was the intellect; 
with it were something of sentiment and much of humor, 
which, blending with the strong mental element, resulted 
in poetry in which every line is masculine. The extraor- 
dinary success which Dr. Holmes had in adhering to 
an antiquated form of verse is due to its admirable fitness 
to be the vehicle of his mind. He discovered this corre- 
spondence between his thought and his measure, his oc- 
casion and his instrument, early in his career; and to 
the end of his days the range of his poetry remained the 
same. It is not likely that it was limited by the narrow 
compass of his verse forms; rather, the two coincided. 



300 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

The conservatism observable in his poetry was char- 
acteristic of his entire nature. Even when he was liberal, 
it was with a Toryish spirit. He felt strongly upon a few 
points. He was never at a loss for a word in favor of 
liberal theology, and one of his favorite modes of praise 
was by means of censure of the old school. He was, dur- 
ing the war, a strong Unionist, and his stanzas of the 
time are remarkable now for the heat of their rhetoric, 
aglow with the intense feeling of the hour; but he did not 
often use his metrical gifts for controversy. On the other 
hand, his conservatism supplied him with admirable 
powers of resistance. He was proof against whatever 
did not fall in with his habits of thought and standards 
of judgment. In these there was a certain admixture of 
tradition. Along his own lines, however, he developed 
with steady gains of power and touch. Some of his later 
poems rank with the best of an earlier time in literary 
skill and in their own charm. The "Autocrat," which 
marks the maturity of his faculties, is his richest work 
in both prose and verse. It exhibits a mind with various 
powers in admirable composition working harmoniously 
and easily together. It shows both weakness and 
strength. One would have inferred, from the handling 
of the little romance in its pages, that there would be 
some uncertainty and awkwardness in the author's story- 
telling when he should come to the making of novels. Its 
greatest attraction lies in the personality of the talker, 
who was able under this fiction to give expression to his 
discursive mind, to use those unexpected but apt com- 
parisons, and to announce those paradoxes, which belong 
to the fine art of conversation, to expose his hobbies, and 
to exploit his scientific knowledge — in a word, to sur- 
render his mind into his readers' hands. Dr. Holmes, 



ON THE DEATH OF HOLMES 301 

to every one who read this volume, immediately became 
like a familiar figure on the street; he had found the way 
to make the acquaintance of men and women whom he 
did not meet directly, and he did it so successfully that 
he became at once an old friend; it is as the "Autocrat" 
that he is still most often referred to and best known. 
In the later volumes of the series there was the same 
sense of immediate communication between author and 
reader. The popularity of all these monologues among 
men of affairs was very remarkable. The vitality, acute- 
ness, and originality of statement, the incisive and abso- 
lute manner, and the intermittent humor which were the 
distinguishing marks of the author, were of themselves 
sufficient to account for this, but something was due to 
the rarity of the sensation. It is not often that a man of 
mature years and such admirable social equipment writes 
a book for the entertainment of his fellows in the same 
spirit in which he would sit down to talk with his friends, 
and discusses with them things in general. It requires, 
moreover, some experience in growing old to appreciate 
the flavor of the style. One may observe in Dr. Holmes's 
later prose, as in his poetry, the absence of any change 
in his quality or form. There is in his very last papers 
an even more intimate mode of address, and perhaps a 
mellower temper, natural to old age such as he was for- 
tunate enough to enjoy; but this is only what years will 
do for a good vintage. 

As a man of letters Dr. Holmes has the wide scope 
here briefly touched; but it is, perhaps, rather as a man 
of his time that he will be remembered. Even now a 
large part of his reputation rests upon other grounds 
than his books. His personality counts perceptibly in 
his popularity. He is, too, a part of the past of Boston. 



3 02 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

Merely to turn over the pages of his poems reminds us 
with how large a portion of the literary life of the city 
in his period he was in close contact. He was himself, 
as has been remarked, an inheritor of the old Phi Beta 
Kappa poets as a recitationist, and he is the last of the 
line. The titles of his biographies recall his close associ- 
ation with Motley and Emerson, and the number of his 
elegies upon learned or literary friends is very large. 
There are few prominent Boston names of his century 
that are not beaded somewhere upon his verse, and his 
tributes to them have often been noble words. With the 
great occasions of the city, the days of the entertainment 
of distinguished guests, he had been as constantly as- 
sociated. Few foreigners of note were then in Boston 
without taking his hand. In the social and intellectual 
life of the city he held for fifty years a leading place, and 
made his memory long in local annals. He had indeed 
extended a local reputation over a continent; but in be- 
coming famous he did not cease to be local. It was as 
a Bostonian that he was known. His attachment to the 
city was great enough to keep him there for the half-cen- 
tury between his student days and his old age; and his 
flattering literary and social reception in England, late 
in life, did not tempt him to recross the Atlantic in quest 
of fresh honors. It is not without reason, therefore, that 
his city has been so faithful to him. Among the group of 
literary men with whom he associated there are names 
destined to a longer brilliancy, and their works have been 
of larger measure; but among them there is none who in 
life was the source of more pleasure to the social gather- 
ings of college and city, or used his talents with more 
faithfulness, making them serviceable within their range. 
He belongs to old Boston now — an historical period of 
the city that cannot be recalled without his name. 



LOWELL'S ADDRESSES 

I 

An essay is the freest, an address one of the most en- 
slaving, forms of literary expression. The speaker is 
subject to the moment, with all that appanage of accident 
and circumstance which has so commanding an influence 
in determining what words are fit then and there; and, 
although an orator gains often from the concentration of 
life in a memorable hour and makes it the very stuff of 
his triumph, the man of letters seldom finds any compen- 
sation of this sort possible to him. Such considerations 
prepare one for what seems a lack of customary freedom 
in some of the occasional speeches of Mr. Lowell, and for 
a novel attitude of the author, which may be expressed 
by saying that he does not talk with you, as he was wont 
to do, but at you. Tact is an admirable quality, and 
when one must observe so many and various amenities 
as a foreign minister who enters into the intellectual and 
social life of a great nation, it is of incalculable utility; 
but the necessity to employ it is an inconvenience to the 
thinker. 

In the address which Lowell made before the Words- 
worth Society, for example, his position as the retiring 
president was evidently an embarrassment to him as a 
critic, and the windings he makes, not, like Burke, into 
his subject, but out of it, are a lesson how to tell the truth 
without making a martyr of one's self, which the most 
skilled master of literary fence might lay to heart. In 

303 



3 04 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

the Harvard address, on the contrary, the constraint of 
the hour was evidenced by the complete liberty of speech 
which he sensibly accorded to himself : as one in the house 
of his friends, he magnanimously determined to say his 
say, irrespective of who might be critical, sure of amiable 
tolerance if not of cordial agreement. But in an essay 
he would not have apologized for plain-speaking. The 
moral is this: that however successful these addresses 
were, and however delightful in themselves, let us not be 
flattered into believing that the man of letters can be so 
admirable as a speaker as he is as a writer, or is ever in 
so favorable an element as when he is composing a book 
for the fit audience, though few, which is impanelled si- 
lently year after year. 

This warning springs from a natural jealousy for 
Lowell's literary fame. The address, nevertheless, has 
proved a fruitful form of expression for his later thought. 
One would not say that he was in earlier writings char- 
acteristically discursive, but the extraordinary fullness of 
his mind and the restless spontaneity of its action make 
him seem so. This copiousness was always his, and age 
has brought a mellower ripeness and more of charm. For 
a man whose mental wealth is so constituted, and who 
yet has never shown a disposition to reduce and sys- 
tematize thought, any literary form which takes the sur- 
plusage of the mind and holds it, is sure to be serviceable. 
These various addresses are less a reasoned criticism of 
books or life or institutions than the overflow of an opu- 
lent mind. The old knowledge how to quote still stands 
him in good stead, as when he repels Carlyle's sneer that 
"America meant only roast turkey every day for every- 
body" by the home-thrust, "he forgot that states, as Ba- 
con said of wars, go on their bellies." The poetic touch, 



LOWELL'S ADDRESSES 305 

too, is as swift and tender as ever, as in the line concern- 
ing the ancient quiet of Oxford, that "the very stones 
seemed happier for being there," and in the dozen other 
perfect sentences which, like 

" captain jewels in the carcanet," 



are "thinly placed" in the Harvard address, and of which 
the tribute to Theocritus is one that shines in the memory. 
But to point out such matters as these is superfluous, in 
the same way as to review what is said of Fielding or 
Cervantes. It is of interest, however, to inquire what is 
the general temper of mind in these addresses — what 
things Lowell has finally found to be of most worth in 
literature and in life. 

In the first rank stands the query, What does Lowell 
think of America? Those who listened to him at Birming- 
ham, when he spoke on "Democracy," heard him more 
simply as an American than his auditors here can do: he 
was a Minister standing for the institutions of his coun- 
try in their eyes, and justifying them in a speech pe- 
culiarly difficult to make because his topic was all but a 
political issue in the practical sphere. Here the case was 
different, and public curiosity was alive to his words 
rather because he was the most eminent representative of 
that group of cultivated men who are commonly believed, 
and not without grounds, to distrust democratic institu- 
tions and to look askance upon the power of the masses. 
There can be no doubt that Lowell had faith in our na- 
tional destiny, as perfect as was ever possessed by a 
patriot aware of dangers, yet supremely confident of mas- 
tery over them. The basis of this belief is nowhere made 
apparent in the addresses as it lies deep in those founda- 
tions of reverence, of trust in divine purpose, of patriotic 



306 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

and humanitarian sentiment, of emotions strongly stirred 
in the war time — in a word, it lies, where alone all faith 
is justified, in character. The address on "Democracy" 
does not help one much who seeks the why of the orator's 
conviction, though it illustrates the course of his thought 
when it is exercised upon the subject of popular govern- 
ment in general. It is not a profound and full exposi- 
tion of the democratic principle. It has rather the con- 
secutiveness of life than the sequence of logic, as indeed 
Lowell himself conceived it, when he announced his pur- 
pose to speak from "some experimental knowledge de- 
rived from the use of such eyes and ears as Nature had 
been pleased to endow me with." He told his Birmingham 
hearers what he had observed in the working of his home 
institutions, spoke of Lincoln and Emerson, who each 
bore authentically the mold of the democratic spirit, and 
other things of note; and he drove home this report of 
things known to him from experience by many weighty 
maxims drawn from the higher region of philosophy, or 
thought applied to the general conditions of human life. 
The sanity of his remarks is the most striking of their 
qualities; they are altogether free from panic, a liability 
to which is the political weakness of culture, and they 
thus keep proportion marvelously. It is with a brief and 
almost careless stroke that he brushes aside a whole host 
of confusion when he says: "The last thing we need be 
anxious about is property." In meeting the objection that 
to arrive at truth by a count of hands is a transparent 
absurdity, there is something like humor in his admission 
of it, while at the same time he points out that in politics 
it is not truth that is to be arrived at, but a working ar- 
rangement; and the count of hands which now prevails 
as a method of decision is rightly contrasted, not with 



LOWELL'S ADDRESSES 307 

the balance of wisdom in that never-existing republic 
where philosophers are kings, but with the historic 
methods of count of pikes, count of stars and garters, 
count of dollars. The way in which the speculative in- 
tellect, in dealing with questions of suffrage and civil 
equality, misses the point, through a lack of the political 
habit of mind, was never more cheerfully exposed. The 
maxim that it is not the Rights, but the Wrongs of men 
that make all the trouble, is phrased and rephrased as 
one shapes glowing metal with strokes of the hammer; 
and no part of the rational groundwork of democracy is 
slighted. 

It is not in these matters, which belong to the past of 
accomplished fact with us, that the most interesting part 
of the political spirit of Lowell lies, for Americans; but 
in those sentences which look to the future, which deal 
with wealth and poverty, with the means of satisfying 
desires which democracy has created, with the possibility 
of modifying those conditions which are the source of 
suffering and injustice to the common people, and like 
themes. He knows the large proportion of woe and want 
that springs from human nature, and is irremediable ex- 
cept by the regeneration of the individual, but he thinks 
that something of the burden on the lower orders of man- 
kind is due to defective social arrangements. He is quite 
sensible of the place of wealth in sustaining society, of 
its beneficence, and of the increase of conscience in its 
holders; but he says sharply that wealth bears those 
burdens "which can most easily be borne, but poverty 
pays with its person the chief expenses of war, pestilence, 
and famine," and adds that all the vast charity of well- 
meaning and laborious philanthropists in the expenditure 
of money is no more than "as if we should apply plasters 



3 o8 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

to a single pustule of the smallpox with a view of driving 
out the disease." The bearing of this view of the relative 
positions of wealth and poverty under conditions which 
admit of change, is too wide-reaching to be followed out 
here. The whole course of thought seems to come to its 
head in his remarks upon Henry George, whose political 
economy he parries with a witticism, but affirms that he 
"is right in his impelling motives"; and, not fearful of 
words, he continues, with a disclaimer of communism on 
the one hand and of State socialism on the other, "but 
socialism means, or wishes to mean, cooperation and com- 
munity of interests, sympathy, the giving to the hands 
not so large a share as to the brains, but a larger share 
than hitherto in the wealth they must combine to pro- 
duce — means, in short, the practical application of Chris- 
tianity to life, and has in it the secret of an orderly 
and benign reconstruction." 

The second point which is to be reckoned lies in the 
literary field. It is no news to say that Mr. Lowell is an 
idealist. It is, nevertheless, worth emphasizing; partly 
because he is the fittest to be called as a witness of any 
public man, and partly because he himself emphasizes the 
fact strenuously. There is no form of the older criticism 
that he does not use to give wings or weight, as the case 
may be, to his words. He draws the distinction as 
markedly now as in years gone by between the imagina- 
tion and the understanding, and classifies authors as in 
one or the other realm. He believes as unreservedly as 
ever in the higher worth of the imagination, and in its 
higher function. Coleridge, he says, taught the English 
mind "to recognize in the imagination an important factor 
not only in the happiness but in the destiny of man"; 
and he does but develop Coleridge and those who fed the 



LOWELL'S ADDRESSES 309 

mind of Coleridge originally, when he says elsewhere, 
"The most vivid sensations of which our moral and in- 
tellectual nature is capable are received through the 
imagination," or, "We hold all the deepest, all the highest 
satisfactions of life as tenants of the imagination." He 
is careful, too, to remind us that when imagination allies 
itself "as best it may" with the understanding, only lower 
ends are possible to it. Again, he defines the world of the 
imagination as "not the world of abstraction and 
nonentity, as some conceive, but a world formed out of 
chaos by a sense of the beauty that is in man and the 
earth on which he dwells." He elucidates the subject 
further by repeating once more the old idea that the 
imagination deals with the type. Thus, of Cervantes's 
characters: "They are not so much taken from life as 
informed with it; . . . not the matter-of-fact work of 
a detective's watchfulness, products of a quick eye and 
a faithful memory, but the true children of the imagina- 
tive faculty, from which all the dregs of observation and 
memory have been distilled away, leaving only what is 
elementary and universal." And if the reader has pa- 
tience for another quotation, the character of pure litera- 
ture — of that cast, as he would say, in the forma mentis 
eterna — was never more nobly and exactly described than 
where he writes of its works as "those in which intellect, 
infused with the sense of beauty, aims rather to produce 
delight than conviction, or, if conviction, then through 
intuition rather than formal logic, and leaving what 
Donne wisely calls 

'Unconcerning things matter of fact' 

to science and the understanding, seeks to give ideal ex- 
pression to those abiding realities of the spiritual world 



310 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

for which the outward and visible world serves at best 
but as the husk and symbol." In that sentence lies the 
whole organon of the higher criticism. If one masters it, 
he is a graduate of literary art, and there is no depart- 
ment of the works of creative genius to which he does not 
hold the key of interpretation. But a view of the art of 
literature which is so pronounced and so frankly set forth 
by the only critic of the highest rank that our country has 
ever produced, does not call for more than statement; 
one need only note the principles of his criticism, and 
dwell on the prominence he gives to the imagination, on 
his old-fashioned adherence to the doctrine that the type 
is the only thing real in an exact sense, and that art con- 
sists in identifying the individual with the type, which is 
the peculiar faculty of genius — its creativeness. 

These are the two most noticeable traits of the ripened 
convictions of Lowell as made known in this volume 
— the democratic and the idealistic temper in forms of 
extraordinary purity. It is evident that he believed in the 
gods who had fashioned his own clay, and he wished 
their power to continue over new generations, because he 
had experienced its enlightening and civilizing influence 
in his own life-long culture. At the Harvard Commem- 
oration he was defending his own masters who had 
brought him to such happy issues of thought, and plead- 
ing that the nurture of our youth be still intrusted to 
those humane studies which were the fecundating intel- 
lectual principle of modern civilization. It was natural for 
him, it was well-nigh a filial duty, to take this view. But 
have not four centuries of compulsory classical study in 
our institutions of learning incorporated the immortal 
part of the ancient culture in our general intellectual life 
as closely as the Judean religious impulse has entered 



LOWELL'S ADDRESSES 311 

into our common spiritual life, so that special training in 
the Latin and Greek may safely be left to the literary 
class as Hebrew to the clerical class? Plutarch is an in- 
spiring author for the young and strengthening to the 
mature; but that American whom Lowell singled out 
as "one of Plutarch's men," and who alone of our country- 
men could support that simple and heroic phrase, was not 
indebted to "insolent Greece or haughty Rome" for one 
tittle of his personal greatness. Was that very one whose 
literary fame braved the classical tradition in that auda- 
cious line of Jonson's eulogy — was Shakespeare so deeply 
obliged, in any direct way, to antiquity by virtue of his 
"small Latin and less Greek"? And as a sign of how 
wide the stream of Virgil's speech has spread abroad, it 
may be mentioned that Lowell quotes often from 
Dante, but neglects Dante's master. Has not the work 
of the Renaissance been accomplished? Our culture is so 
permeated with the old wisdom, so articulated with clas- 
sical canons, so informed with rationality that the new 
birth of learning may be regarded as complete; one draws 
on the ancient fountain-head whenever he taps a modern 
literature, and thereby the necessity of an original ac- 
quaintance with the classics for every man who aspires to 
be liberally educated, is greatly lessened if not destroyed. 
For the very few who may hope to reach any distinction 
in refinement, leaders in culture, the men of letters and 
of art, interested mainly only in the best things produced 
by the spirit of man, the training by which Lowell 
had been molded will still be needful; it is got, not in 
colleges, but in the private study. Professors cannot give 
it, for it is self-imposed, and, after all, it is less a disci- 
pline than an inner growth. In what worth of substance 
it results, in what attractive charm of manner, in what 



3i2 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

universal efficacy of thought, these addresses illustrate, 
by the impression they make of both the quality and vol- 
ume of the settled and habitual wisdom of which they are 
so partial and fragmentary a record. They are a better 
defense of the rights of humane study than any advocate 
could frame. The best moral is implicit in things, not 
explicit in words ; and in this volume there is the authen- 
tic impress of the classical spirit — age seasons every page, 
and yet every page is young. 



II 

The country may justly take pride in the temper and 
quality of these speeches, which display national as well 
as personal excellences, and will be the lasting record of 
Lowell's life abroad, as a representative American. But 
more than the variety of theme and circumstance in the 
contents of this volume, its unity of spirit, its single- 
mindedness, are forced upon the reader's attention: not 
that it is characterized by sameness of idea, — on the 
contrary, it is perpetually changeful in thought, — or by 
any scheme or system which of itself organizes a man's 
knowledge always in the same general lines, and is thus 
the source of a merely formal and specious coherency; 
nor that it has any one end in view, any defined purpose, 
or recurring moral, or proselytizing tendency, even; but 
in it one perceives everywhere the presence of culture 
transmuted into character, knowledge that has suffered 
the immortalizing change into wisdom, judgments that 
share in the permanency of things because derived from 
long-established traditions and the whole intellectual and 
social habit of the race, — in brief, one sees the same 






LOWELL'S ADDRESSES 313 

mind in it all, completely developed, consistent, and forti- 
fied in its principles. 

This mind is preeminently that of a man of letters. 
Literature, in the exact sense, has been its nutriment. 
The largest part of what Mr. Lowell has to say, too, per- 
tains to literature. It is true that the greater portion is 
strictly criticism, though somewhat affected in its form 
and bearing by the circumstance that it was spoken, and 
must be read by the ear as well as by the eye; but it is 
more than criticism, as generally understood, because the 
decisions do not apply merely to the special author in 
hand, but have a wider relation to authorship itself; not to 
books alone, but also to the spiritual life which it is the 
office of books to quicken, strengthen, and perfect. 
Lowell may be writing of some individual, and have only 
him in mind; but it frequently happens that a slightly 
accented sentence, what seems perhaps a simple remark 
by the way, is a text for a long sermon, if the reader will 
follow out its suggestions. Sometimes Lowell's suppres- 
sion of this implicit homily appears to be against his 
will. He, as a man of letters, necessarily places a high 
value upon literary form; wisdom by itself is less prized 
apart — to use his own phrase — from "the beauty in 
which it is incarnated"; and for a poet to fail of this in- 
carnating beauty, he is well assured, is a defect in the 
very substance and tissue of genius. With the growth 
of popular education, there has lately come an effort to 
make analysis do the work of intuition in the study of 
literature; because the eye cannot see what the poet has 
embodied, it is fancied that the dissecting hand can make 
the soul apparent; but what is thus arrived at is truth, 
in its philosophical, not its poetic form. The method has 
its advantages, no doubt, and one would not depreciate 



3 i 4 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

its worth; in particular, it is a great boon to poets who 
in considerable portions of their work have not expressed 
the truth with such perfection that it can be perceived at 
first sight; that is, to poets who have failed, at times, in 
that "incarnating beauty" which belongs to the ever- 
living works of genius. Students of Wordsworth know 
very well that he is often sensible when he is not poetic, 
but his devotees are slow to recognize and acknowledge 
the fact that at such times his poems have not the prin- 
ciple of life in them which makes real literature survive, 
and constitutes its reality. To think all of Wordsworth, 
or any very large proportion of his literary remains, to be 
literature is to confuse the mind's sense of relative values; 
to set up a standard of meaning in place of the old stan- 
dard of style is to abolish the distinction of prose and 
verse, of philosophy and poetry; and to substitute for 
the creative artist that merely percipient creature who 
is called the Seer. Lowell made many a downright stroke, 
in his address to the Wordsworth Society, which must 
have seemed to the poet's more devout worshipers as 
if their idol were having his hands and feet lopped off; 
but the most significant word, the unkindest cut of all, 
when one sees how deep it sinks into the marrow, is a 
hardly noticeable sentence slipping gravely in at the end 
of a paragraph: "There are various methods of criticism; 
but I think we should all agree that literary work is to 
be judged from the purely literary point of view." Who 
would not assent to so obvious a truism? But what be- 
comes of Wordsworthians in general, what becomes of 
the modern sect of the Browningites, if literary work is 
"to be judged from the purely literary point of view"? It 
is to escape from the literary point of view and its limi- 
tations that meaning is made the test of value, indepen- 



LOWELL'S ADDRESSES 315 

dent of style, and the gown of the scholar usurps the 
honors due alone to the poet's laurel. It is well to be 
understood; the now popular method of study may feed 
the mind, may open the inner truth of the author and 
multiply its usefulness as thought, and no doubt does this 
excellent service; but shall the foolish therefore imagine 
that lucid expression is not elemental in the work of 
genius, or that any poetry which lacks it is of enduring 
power? A man of letters is naturally impatient of the 
intrusion of foreign standards upon the domain of litera- 
ture, and must at least "hesitate" his dissent, as Lowell 
has here done. 

There is a good deal in these addresses, as a whole, 
which must be classed as dissent; for in many respects 
Lowell stands against a rising tide. Is it to be inferred 
that he represents the times that were, in literary criti- 
cism and in his conviction of what nurture is best for the 
souls of men? Certainly it is to be feared that Coleridge, 
to whose spiritualizing influence he regards the English 
mind as much indebted, is little read, less consulted, and 
perhaps scarcely understood by those who rule the hour 
among us. It would not be venturing much to intimate 
that younger men will learn more of the great critical 
authority of their fathers from this speech, on unveiling 
his bust in the Abbey, than they ever knew from Cole- 
ridge's own works. The trend of our time is toward the 
lowlands of the understanding, so Lowell seems to think; 
is toward the region of observation and record, toward 
the science of what the senses report, and that portraiture 
of the material which is comprehensively termed realism. 
To dwell on the merits of Coleridge, to expound the 
methods of Cervantes in creation, or, nearer at hand, to 
point to Fielding's way, is to prefer the Old Comedy to 



3 i6 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

the New, in our Athens. Some one may irreverently sug- 
gest that, though Coleridge no doubt did a good turn in 
importing Germany, it is Russia that we need now; and 
Cervantes, — was he not a romantic writer, perhaps? As 
for Fielding, why, he lived long before Thackeray and 
Dickens, even! Irreverence might go so far, for what 
head among us but quails beneath the truncheon of 
realism? Yet when he was over-seas Lowell told the 
workingmen to whom he read his notes on "Don Quixote" 
that when he entered the company of the realistic school 
he felt "set to grind in the prison-house of the Philistines. 
I walk about in a nightmare, the supreme horror of which 
is that my coat is all button-holed for bores to thrust their 
fingers through, and bait me to my heart's content." And 
he goes on to speak of ancient worthies, like that im- 
possible Hector, and Roland with his ridiculous horn, 
and Macbeth in the old witch-story, and others of the 
same kind of beings, who "move about, if not in worlds 
not realized, at least in worlds not realized to any eye but 
that of imagination, a world far from police reports, a 
world into which it is a privilege, I might almost say an 
achievement, to enter." Our irreverent critic will, per- 
haps, not dispute the alleged habitat of these romantic 
heroes, but as to the privilege and achievement of enter- 
ing there he will be more skeptical. Lowell belongs 
to the idealists, and it is too much to expect that he should 
take a more modern view; he has been so shaped and 
inspired by the old culture that he is loyal to it as to the 
blood and spirit of the fathers; and the old culture is, 
beyond gainsaying, idealistic, from Homer and David 
down to the birth of Zola. It could scarcely be hoped 
that a man to whom literature as it has been is the breath 
of his spiritual being should revoke old-time judgments, 



LOWELL'S ADDRESSES 317 

and decree anew in favor of literature as we make it. 
Such charitable consideration will be allowed to a veteran 
of criticism, no doubt, by the most modern school; but 
he can hardly look for more than tolerance. Is it, then, 
so true that to get away from our neighbors we must seek 
Plutarch? Can one not converse with the spirit except 
in Dante? And after all, would it be so very much wiser 
to stay with our neighbors, and disbelieve in heroes of an 
older type; to deny the spirit, and give our days and 
nights to the jargon of French fish-wives and the slang of 
the American street? Lowell observes, "We are apt to 
wonder at the scholarship of the men of three centuries 
ago, and at a certain dignity of phrase that characterizes 
them. They were scholars, because they did not read so 
many things as we. They had fewer books, but these 
were of the best. Their speech was noble, because they 
lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato." There is 
"a certain dignity of phrase" that characterizes this vol- 
ume also, such as has not been noticeable in any American 
book for a long time. Is not the reason, in its degree, 
the same, and may it not be that the old culture is still 
justified of her children? Three centuries hence, if any 
should care to examine the literature of this decade, will 
they not explain Lowell's preeminence, in weight, close- 
ness, and beauty of phrase in somewhat the same way? 
If this should prove so, the realists may well ponder that 
admirable quotation which is so forcibly flung down be- 
fore the feet of those who forget "the warning of Sir 
Walter Raleigh, perhaps more important to the artist 
than to the historian, that it is dangerous to follow truth 
too near the heels." As a matter of minor criticism, there 
is a passing remark upon Spanish literature: speaking of 
the "flavor of the soil," he says, "It has the advantage of 



3 i8 LITERARY MEMOIRS 

giving even to second-class writers in a foreign language 
that strangeness which in our own tongue is possible only 
to originality either of thought or style." Does not this 
indicate the mistake of perspective that is made by those 
who are loud in the praise of foreign books? 

Dissents of other kinds are to be found in these pages. 
It is not a bird-bolt shot into the air, when the critic of 
Fielding turns upon those who find that author intolerably 
gross with the rejoinder that "the second of the seven 
deadly sins is not less dangerous when she talks mysti- 
cism, and ogles us through the gaps of a fan painted with 
the story of the virgin martyr." This sentence lays bare 
the most offensive weakness of the esthetic school. It 
would be ungracious to dwell only upon the points of dis- 
agreement which the author reveals between his percep- 
tion of what is and his judgment of what ought to be. 
How many and various they are may be known from the 
examples which have been cited; but were they much 
more numerous, and the rifts of severance as wide as they 
are profound, — which is by no means the case, — the 
author would remain an optimist; in the midst of his 
most destructive critical reservations he would seem only 
a wiser, not a less sincere and reverential, worshiper; in 
the full flow of his protest, whether against realism, or 
the new education, or what not, he would interpose a 
compliment of Spanish largeness, and confirm his audi- 
ence in their conviction of the general cheerfulness of the 
outlook. If Lowell does not readily acquiesce with all 
the powers that be, he believes in those that are to be. 
He will not despair of the republic of letters, or that of 
democracy either. To his view there are apparently 
darker clouds in the literary than in the political horizon; 
but, however that may turn out, he is certainly more in 



LOWELL'S ADDRESSES 319 

harmony with current thought in what he has to say of 
our institutions and society, of the national experience of 
democracy, and of the progressive and humanizing ele- 
ments in our social theory than he is in his discussions of 
education or of the laws of literary art. If his dissents 
in the one division are instructive, no less are his assents 
in the other. He could not profess more explicitly ad- 
herence to the democratic principle as the basis of a 
greater and more equal public welfare in the state than 
any nation has hitherto known, as the promise of a pros- 
perity to be still more widely distributed among the 
common people, and as a means of regeneration in the life 
of the poor. He more than adheres to the political faith 
in which the nation is built, — his acceptance of it goes 
to the point of advocacy. 

The leading address in this volume, that on democracy, 
is the work of an exceptionally wise and subtle observer. 
It does not take pains to sustain democracy upon the 
ground of its foundations in equity, in utility, and the 
manifest destiny which history reveals to the student; 
rather, it maintains the practical working of it against 
objections which are deeply lodged only in the prejudices, 
self-conceit, and fears of a cultivated class, and dwells 
upon its inevitable success and its humanitarian spirit. 
Lowell is not one of the weaklings of philanthropy. He 
had such object-lessons in mania before him in his youth, 
and the half-century in which his life had been thrown 
had been so thick with reforms that he was not to be cap- 
tured by any cause at this late day. He refers more than 
once to those whose sympathies are so touched by some 
single case of suffering that they fail to perceive the regu- 
lative law, to those who cannot see the crime because the 
criminal's person intervenes, and to other classes whose 



3 2o LITERARY MEMOIRS 

sensibilities are more developed than their judgments. He 
himself sees with perfect clearness a definitely constituted 
world, whose conditions may be hard but are fixed, and 
also a something which the theologians used to call man's 
heart, the prolific source of evil, suffering, and pain; and 
he is well aware that all human life goes on, as one might 
say, between these upper and nether grindstones of Na- 
ture and Human Nature; he does not look for any phi- 
lanthropy to change this constitution of things. It is a 
welcome sight when one whose hold is so firm on the facts 
of human existence nevertheless suggests and apparently 
believes that the organization of society is subject to con- 
siderable human improvement, and not a part of that 
order with which man has nothing to do but to submit 
to it. The value of such suggestion and belief depends 
upon the kind of change which the writer deems possible 
and desirable. Lowell does not express himself very fully 
upon the matter, but he seems willing to follow the idea 
of democracy into its developments with that optimistic 
feeling which has already been remarked upon. A care- 
ful reader will observe a thorough-going sympathy with 
the effort of the poor, the humble and homely classes who 
do the physical work of the world, to obtain a larger share 
of the fruits of the common toil; and also he may notice 
a cordial disposition of mind toward the purposes and 
spirit at least of some of those who aim at this result 
through social changes. One should not put an undue 
emphasis upon his words, but it is not too much to say 
that he shows a mind open and hospitable to those re- 
forms of the future which democracy seems to carry in 
itself as premises contain a conclusion. 



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